BBNAN11100 – Survey Literature Seminar 2: From the Restoration to the End of the 19th
Century
Dr. Michael McAteer
In this seminar you will read and discuss some of the most important works of English
literature from the later sixteenth century (the Restoration) to middle of the nineteenth
ceutury, concluding with Emily Brontë’s celebrated novel, Wuthering Heights. The seminar
will introduce you to many styles and movements in English literature as it developed during
this period. These include the ‘mock heroic’ form of John Dryden’s poetry, satire in Swift and
Congreve, and the neo-classical style in the poetry of Pope and the fiction of Jane Austen.
Your knowledge of English language and literature will be enriched as you discover the array
of dispositions evoked in writing over the course of two centuries: witty, stylish, demure,
passionate, cynical, idealistic, tragic, and heroic.
Week One Thursday February 12:
Introduction
Week Two: Thursday, February 19: John Dryden ‘Mac Flecknoe’.
Week Three: Thursday, February 26: Jonathan Swift, Gullivers Travels (Part 1, 2, 4)
Week Four: Thursday, March 5: Danel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
Week Five: Thursday, March 12: William Congreve, The Way of the World (drama)
Week Six: Thursday, March 19: Alexander Pope, ‘An Essay on Criticism’.
Week Seven: Thursday, March 26: Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
TERM BREAK
Week Eight: Thursday, April 16: Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Week Nine: Thursday, April 23: William Wordsworth, ‘Ode: Intimations on Immortality’
Week Ten: Thursday, April 30: Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
Week Eleven: Thursday, May 7: In-class Examination
Week Twelve: Thursday, May 14: Examination feedback
Reading:
Many of the texts for this seminar can be found online in the following website: archive.org.
Additionally, consult The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors
(London: Norton, 1987). Copies of this are available in PPKE Library. Cheap paperback
editions of the novels on this seminar course are widely available.
N.B.: I STRONGLY ADVISE YOU TO BEGIN READING NOVELS AT LEAST TWO WEEKS IN
ADVANCE OF CLASS. THIS WILL GIVE YOU ENOUGH TIME TO COMPLETE THE READING
BEFORE THE SEMINAR.