Dr Yih-Dau Wu
ydw20@nccu.edu.tw
Office: Research Building 717
Telephone: (02)2939-3091#88103
English literature:
1600-1800
Course objectives
This course seeks to equip students with a well-rounded knowledge of the development of
English literature in the period 1603-1785. Students will learn contemporary social, cultural
and historical contexts that nourished and stimulated literary imagination. They will also read
a wide range of texts, covering poetry, prose (fiction) and drama. Examining how these
important texts explicitly or implicitly respond to the historical moments in which they were
produced, students will learn to appreciate the transformative and affective power of
literature.
Course description
At the centre of this course lies a concern with the interplay between literary form and social
transformations in seventeenth and eighteenth-century England. We will ask the following
questions: to what extent can a literary work become a political and/or religious tool? What
happen when writers insist that literature must be didactic? In what ways can words express
feeling economically yet beautifully? Central issues that may complicate these questions
include monarchy and anarchy, travel, changing attitudes towards gender, the representation
of rural scenes, loss and gain.
Evaluation:
Attendance and in-class discussion: 20%
Group presentations: 20%
Mid-term exam: 30%
Final exam: 30%
Schedule:
Week 1 (18th Feb.)
Week 2 (25th Feb.)
Week 3 (4th March)
Introduction; The Early Seventeenth Century 1603-1660
Jacobean drama: Ben Johnson and John Webster
The Metaphysical poets: John Donne and Andrew Marvell
Week 4 (11th March) Gender relations: conflict and counsel pp. 1648-1660
The Metaphysical Poets: George Herbert and Henry
Vaughan
Week 5 (18th March)
The Cavalier Poets: Richard Lovelace, Thomas Carew and
Robert Herrick
1
Week 6 (25th March)
Crisis of Authority pp. 1834-1880
Week 7 ( 1st April)
Week 8 (8th April)
Week 9 (15th April)
John Milton
John Milton
Mid-term exam
Week 10
(22th April)
The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century 1660-1785
Week 11
(29th April)
Week 12
(6th May)
Religion and Satire: John Bunyan; Alexander Pope and
William Congreve
Prose fiction: Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, excerpts from
Daniel Defoe’s and Jonathan Swift’s works
Week 13
(13th May)
Essays: Joseph Addition; Richard Steele and Samuel
Johnson
Week 14
(20th May)
Sport’s Day
Week 15
(27th May)
Dr Emily Sun from National Tsing Hua University will give
a talk on this day.
Week 16
(2nd June)
Week 17
(9th June)
Week 18
(17th June)
Week 19
(24th June)
Low people and high people pp. 2435-2464
Debating women pp. 2766-2786
Liberty and its discontents pp. 3018-3043
Poetry: Oliver Goldsmith and William Cowper pp. 30613076
Final exam
2