John E. Loftis

Fall 2001

ENG 626

Satire & Sensibility


William Hogarth, "Gin Lane"	Isaac Cruickshank, "The Found Child"

For an enlarged view, click on either painting.

This Page

This web page should be considered a work in progress. The class will be expected to suggest new texts, images, links, and functions during the course of the semester. Members of the class may wish to create and link their own pages and/or add projects, reports, or commentary to this page.

Course Description

This course will examine two major impulses in eighteenth-century English literature and culture: the urge to judge and attack and the urge to empathize and feel deeply. We will first read some major poetic and prose satires of Dryden, Pope, and Swift. We will then turn to the literature of sentiment or sensibility, first in poets such a Cowper, Gray, Young, and Warton, and then in prose fiction by Richardson, S. Fielding, Lewis, Goldsmith, and Sterne. This course is designed to offer graduate students an overview of the literature of eighteenth-century England as well as a focused exploration of two major literary and cultural trends of the period through an examination selected texts.

Weekly Course Outline:

1. Satire: definitions and discussion of the genre; Pope, "Epistle to Arbuthnot"

2. Dryden: "Absalom and Achitophel" and "MacFlecknoe

3-4. Pope: "Rape of the Lock," selected Horatian Imitations, "Dunciad"

5-6. Swift: selected poems, "Tale of a Tub," "Modest Proposal," "Batle of the Books," "Mechanical Operations of the Spirit," "Bickerstaff Papers," "An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity"

7. Sentimentality: Definitions and discussion; Thomas Warton the Younger, "The Pleasures of Melancholy"

8. Selected poetry of Cowper, Gray, Young, Warton

9-10. Samuel Richardson, Clarissa

11. Sarah Fielding, David Simple

12. Matthew Lewis,The Monk

13. Oliver Goldsmith,The Vicar of Wakefield

14. Laurence Sterne,A Sentimental Journey

15. Conclusion

Course Requirements:

Each student will make at least one class presentation, take a final exam, and write a research paper of 20-25 pages.

Texts:

Texts available at the Bookstop

Dryden, Cowper, Young, Warton and others, Norton Anthology and/or internet e-texts (see sites below).

Pope, Poetry and Prose of Alexander Pope . ed. Aubrey Williams. HM--Riverside.

Swift, The Writings of Jonathan Swift . ed. Greenberg and Piper. Norton--Critical.

Richardson,Clarissa . ed. Sherburn. HM--Riverside.

S. Fielding, David Simple . Worlds Classics.

Lewis, The Monk . Worlds Classics.

Goldsmith,The Vicar of Wakefield . Penguin.

Sterne,A Sentimental Journey. Everyman.

Links to useful web sites:

1. Jack Lynch page--a large compilation of links to eighteenth-century materials, literary and other

2.voice of the shuttle--links to humanities research pages

3. McGann/Spacks--a web page for a course on the sentimental novel at UVa taught by Jerome McGann and Patricia M. Spacks

Email:

Email, class listserv: ???

Email instructor: jelofti@unco.edu

Select Bibliography:

The following is a very modest beginning of a bibliography on the two main topics for this course (you will find a much longer bibliography and much more on the McGann/Spacks web page cited above). The class will be expected to suggest additional items based on research and reading during the semester, including useful scholarship on individual authors.

Satire:

Griffin, Dustin. Satire: A Critical Reintroduction. Lexington, KY: U KY P, 1994

Mack, Maynard, "The Muse of Satire,"Yale Review 41(1951-52): 80-92.

Rawson, C. J. Satire and Sentiment, 1660-1830. NY: Cambridge UP, 1994.

Rosenheim, Edward. Swift and the Satirist's Art. Chicago: U Chicago P, 1963.

Williams, Aubrey. Pope's Dunciad: A Study of its Meaning. 1955; NY: Archon, 1968.

Sensibility:

Braudy, Leo. "The Form of the Sentimental Novel."Novel 7 (1973): 5-13.

Crane, R. S. "Suggestions toward a Genealogy of the 'Man of Feeling.'" ELH 1 (1934): 205-30.

Frye, Northrop. "Towards Defining an Age of Sensibility."Eighteenth Century English Literature: Essays In Modern Criticism. Ed. James L. Clifford. New York: Oxford UP, 1959. 311-18.

Greene, Donald. "Latitudinarianism and Sensibility: The Genealogy of the 'Man of Feeling' Reconsidered."MP 75 (1977):159-83.

McGann, Jerome. The Poetics of Sensibility: A Revolution in Literary Style. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.

Spacks, Patricia Meyer. "Oscillations of Sensibility."New Literary History 25 (1994): 505- 20.

Todd, Janet.Sensibility: An Introduction. New York: Methuen, 1986.

Van Sant, Ann Jessie.Eighteenth-Century Sensibility And The Novel: The Senses In Social Context. New York: Cambridge UP, 1993.