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What's new?
Change of assignment for last day of class.
Change of assignment for last day of class.
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English 102B || The Problem of the New: Restoration and 18th century || Winter 2013 || TuTh 9:30-10:50 a.m. ||
The course begins in the mid-17th century just after a civil war, the execution of a king, and eleven years of Parliamentary rule. It moves forward to the end of the following century with the American and French Revolutions and the abolition of the slave trade.
The course begins with a view of the cultural desire to achieve stability, a desire that seemed to depend on restoring the forms and customs lost or threatened by the political and religious turbulence of the immediate and radical past.
Innovation was for much of the period and in many contexts a negative concept. And yet, this period was highly innovative. A famous scientific society was established, women first acted on the stage, the new literary form of the novel appeared, the Bank of England was established and modern finance capitalism emerged, a new philosophy developed, and skepticism in philosophy became part of a more general Enlightenment thinking. And with the emergence of chattel slavery as a moral issue, the culture was challenged on both new and old grounds.
Of course there were also forms of resistance to cultural change, much of it in satire. We will take as our central theme “the problem of the NEW.” Our anthology sets up this problem in the following way:
The course ends with the work of a writer who sympathizes with the American Revolution but repudiates the French Revolution and in general epitomizes conservative thinking. Rather than restoration, conservation becomes the concept in opposition to radical change.
Course Information || Mid-term exam#1 || Midterm exam #2 || Final Exam|| Mail Archive || Message Board
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DATE
Outline of the English Major
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In class today
Material listed in this column is assigned for this day.
The schedule may change if we need to change it.
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Supporting Materials
Although you do not need to respond formally to the study questions, exams will be based on the assumption that you have considered the SQ carefully.
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Week #1
Tuesday, 4/2
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Introduction to course The Radical Political Context:
A common peoples history of the UK part 3
Col. Thomas Rainsborough & the Levellers
The Putney Debates, 1647
Trial and Death of King Charles
An Agreement of the free people of England
Emerging from Radical Politics:
Remaking the Society politically:Declaration of Breda superseded by the Clarendon Code
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The Great Fire (1666) & The Plague followed by a different form of re-making
Peter Ackroyd's London: the great fire |
Levellers Selected Works of the Levellers
The Putney Debates, 1647
"Religious dissent in England"
Explanation of the Declaration of Breda
The Great Plague (part of historical site on contagion)
The London Plague: 1665
London's Burning: The Great Fire Map: the Great Fire of 1666
Pepys's Diary on the fire
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Thursday, 4/4
Continuing controversy over the new in religion
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Samuel Pepys, Diary. Sept. 1666
BABL, 132-137.
Introduction to Daniel Defoe, Shortest Way with the Dissenters
Online text: Shortest Way || Please print out.
If your last name begins with "A," "B," or "C," please write an entry on the "radical context" or on Samuel Pepys's Diary. Added note: You can also write on Defoe's Shortest Way.
'The first parliament of Queen Anne: First session - Act preventing occasional conformity - begins 20/10/1702' |
Defoe in the stocks
SQ for Shortest Way
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Week #2
Tuesday, 4/9
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"Shortest Way with the Dissenters"
If your last name begins with "F," "G," "H," or "K," write an entry in response to Defoe's Shortest Way.
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Defoe, Political Pamphleteer
NYPL digital archive images of Defoe and his work
Occasional conformity bill |
Thursday, 4/11
The "new" in drama
Wit comedy & women on the stage
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William Wycherley, The Country Wife (1675) BABL, 238ff. Act I & Act II.
"L," "M," or "P,"write an entry on The Country Wife.
Consider the study questions or the production starring Helen Mirren. Everyone is invited to respond to the entries.
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The Country Wife, Youtube. With Helen Mirren
The China scene. Youtube
SQ, The Country Wife |
Week #3
Tuesday, 4/16
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The Country Wife, Act III, Act IV, Act V
If your last name begins with "R" or "S," please write an entry on The Country Wife. |
Helen Miren as Margery Pinchwife
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Thursday, 4/18
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The Country Wife
Discussion of the immorality of the stage: A Short View of the Immorality and Profanements of the English Stage. BABL, 655 ff.
If your last name begins with "V" or "W," please write an entry on the immorality of the English stage.
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Week #4 Tuesday, 4/23
A new scene of politics
Parody
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Midterm #1 (50 min.)
Introduction: John Gay, (1728)
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The Beggar's Opera, directed by Jeremy Barlow
Beggar's Opera, first production
PPT slides
"Over the Hills and Far Away" from The Beggar's Opera Youtube.
Laurence Olivier as Captain Macheath and Dorothy Tutin in Peter Brook's 1953 version of John Gay's "Beggar's Opera".
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Thursday, 4/25
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The Beggar's Opera
Hogarth, scene from The Beggar's Opera
Let's try "free for all" with message board comments. Anyone is invited to comment and to respond.
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SQ The Beggar's Opera
Victoria & Albert Museum on 18th c. theater--featuring Beggar's Opera
Robert Walpole, Encyclopedia Britannica
John Portman, The English Baroque, The Beggar's Opera
Examples follow below, but visit the site.
Act 1 No 03. Air 1 'An old woman clothed in gray': (Peachum) Through all the Employments of Life
Act I - Air 5 A maid is like the golden ore
Act 2 No 04. Air 20 'March in Rinaldo' (Handel): Let us take the Road.
Act 2 No 17. Air 27 'A lovely lass to a friar came': Thus when a good huswife sees a rat (Luch/Macheath)
From these examples, you can locate the rest. |
Week #5 Tuesday, 4/30
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The Beggar's Opera
Again, anyone is invited to comment.
Pay special attention to last section of The Contemlator's Short History of John Gay and the Beggar's Opera: music.
Pay special attention to the ending. And come to class prepared to make a general claim. |
The Contemplator's Short History of John Gay and the Beggar's Opera
Henry Purcell and his contemporaries |
| Thursday, 5/2 |
New Science: 1. Introductory material in anthology: 143-145.
2. Thomas Sprat, From introduction to the History of the Royal Society, pp. 146, ff.
3. Philosophical Transactions, pp. 149 ff.
4. Joseph Priestley, Experiments and Observations on Different kinds of Air, pp. 155, ff.
Review in 1665 of Hooke's Micrographia
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"The frontispiece to Sprat's History of the Royal Society"
Life through a lens: exploring the miniature world with Robert Hooke's Micrographia
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (beginning in 1665)
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Week #6 Tuesday, 5/7
 An ant as imaged using a scanning electron microscope
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New science
Archive of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Choose one report between 1660 and 1728 and write about it on the message board.
Robert Hooke, Micrographia: Or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses, with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon (1665), pp. 161 ff.
Voltaire, Micromegas (1752), pp. 171 ff.
Recommended: Gulliver's Travels, Book II, chap. 3, pp. 429-433.
Gulliver's Travels, Book II, chap. 5, pp. 436-440.
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Examples:
**An Account of Some Experiments on the Effects of the Poison of the Rattle-Snake. 1727
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An Account of a Fork Put up the Anus, That Was Afterwards Drawn out Through the Buttock; Communicated in a Letter to the Publisher, by Mr. Robert Payne, Surgeon at Lowestofft 1724
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The Art of Living under Water: Or, a Discourse concerning the Means of Furnishing Air at the Bottom of the Sea, in Any Ordinary Depths. By Edm. Halley, LL. D. Secretary to the Royal Society 1714
SQ, New science
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Thursday, 5/9
The "form" of the new science turned to political satire
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The new science
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, "PART 3 –
A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg,
Glubbdubdrib, and Japan," chap. 2, pp. 455-59.
Chap. 5, "The Grand Academy of Lagado," pp. 465-469.
Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal
If you did not write on the "new science" on previous days, please do so now. |
'dam': OED
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Week #7 Tuesday, 5/14
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A Modest Proposal
Sermons and Tracts: Backgrounds to A Modest Proposal; from Jonathan Swift, “Causes of the Wretched Condition of Ireland”; from Jonathan Swift, A Short View of the State of Ireland .
If you have not yet written on the "new science" or on other issues related to The Modest Proposal, now's the time. And even if you have, you could write again.
Skepticism & Philosophy: David Hume, "On Miracles." |
Political arithmetick, or, A discourse concerning the extent and value of lands, people, buildings ... as the same relates to every country in general, but more particularly to the territories of His Majesty of Great Britain, and his neighbours of Holland, Zealand, and France / by Sir William Petty ... , London : Printed for Robert Clavel ... and Hen. Mortlock ..., 1690.
See also Sir William Petty, Political Arithmetick. |
Thursday, 5/16
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David Hume, "On Miracles"
James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
(1791) section re: Hume (185-6).
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Week #8
Tuesday, 5/21
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Midterm Exam #2 (9:30-10:50)
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Thursday, 5/22
Instructing the new woman
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Mary Astell, selections from A Proposal to the Ladiesˆ and from Reflections Upon Marriage" BABL, 355-372.
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SQ: Mary Astell
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Week #9
Tuesday, 5/28
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Astell and attacks in the periodical press
Continue reading of Astell.
Tatler #32, a satiric treatment of Astell's proposal
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Thursday, 5/30
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Slavery: a moral challenge to the culture
Political slavery: CHAP. IV. Of SLAVERY. - John Locke, The Two Treatises of Civil Government (Hollis ed.) [1689]
Chattel slavery: Richard Ligon, A True & Exact History of the Island of Barbados (1657), 827-8.
John Woolman, "Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes" (1754), 823-30,
William Cowper, The Task (1785), online: Transatlantic currents, pp. 6-10 (Book 2, lines 1-254).
Slavery as metaphor (AJVS)
Write an entry on the messageboard about this material.
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Abolitionist Campaigners
The Somerset Decision (1772) |
| Week #10 Tuesday, 6/4 |
John Newton, A Slave Trader's Journal (1751). online: Contexts: The Abolition of the Slave Trade, pp. 2-3.
Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, Thoughts and
Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1787), p. 3.
Alexander Falconbridge, Account of the Slave
Trade on the Coast of Africa (1788), pp. 3-5.
William Wilberforce, "Speech to the House of Commons," 13 May 1789, pp. 6-7.
Robert Boncher Nicholls, Observations, Occasioned by the Attempts Made in England to Effect the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1788), pp. 7-8.
Anonymous, Thoughts on the Slavery of
Negroes, as it Affects the British Colonies in the West Indies: Humbly Submitted to the Consideration of Both Houses of Parliament (1788), pp. 8-9.
Gordon Turnbull, An Apology of Negro Slavery; or, the West India Planters Vindicated from the Charge of Inhumanity (1786), pp. 9-10.
Look further in this section of the anthology.
Write an entry on the message board.
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See also anthology, Contexts: The Abolition of the Slave Trade, p. 12.
SQ, Slavery & abolition of the trade
An Abstract of the Evidence Delivered Before a Select Committee of the House of Commons in the Years 1790, and 1791; on the part of the Petitioners for the Abolition of the Slave-Trade (pdf download)
An Abstract of the Evidence (read online) |
Thursday, 6/6
NB: Change of schedule for last day.
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Reflection on the course and thinking about the final exm
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A path not taken: See this link for material on Chimney sweepers--and two views of how society should respond to the problem of social responsibility for their plight. I decided that it would be better to reflect on where we have been than to add this material. |
Final exam schedule
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Our FINAL EXAM: Thur, Jun 13 8:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
Alternative final exam date & time: 12:00-2:00 on Monday, June 10. The room is 341 HIB |
BLUEBOOKS |
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