The aim of this course is to provide students with a survey of English literature between the Restoration of the British monarchy in 1660 and the middle of the following century. The course aims to immerse students in the literary language of the time, and to contextualise the emergence of modern genres such as those of the novel and the journalistic essay - genres which reflect a rapidly developing print culture and a growing middle-class readership.

This module aims to provide students with a survey of the English literature of the period variously known as the Augustan Age, the long eighteenth century, and the Enlightenment in Britain and Ireland. Informing students of the various critical and historical methodologies which can be applied to later seventeenth and eighteenth-century writing, we will study changes in literary practice and form alongside changes in the nature of author and audience, paying close attention to the broad cultural transition in which the cynical, satirical, and sometimes highly sexualised literature of the Restoration period (1660-c1700) yielded to the gentler pastoral sensibilities of the middle of the eighteenth century. Along the way we will study utopian, libertarian and feminist impulses at work in the literature and thought of the Restoration and Augustan periods; we will also place these works in their global context, appreciating that this literature was produced on the cusp of the first substantial phase of BritainÆs imperial expansion. The social history, philosophy, and literary forms of the period will be examined through a close study of selected texts.

On successful completion of this module, students will be able to: * Demonstrate and deploy a succinct knowledge of methodological and scholarly debates in Restoration and Augustan Literary studies. * Utilize and apply methodologies of literary criticism, of documentary and archive research, discussed and work-shopped in small-group lab environments.

* Extrapolate the ongoing relevance of 17th and 18th century literary debates about liberty, slavery, and the individual; * Explain and delineate the ongoing historical, intellectual, literary, and cultural and philosophical significance of terms such as æ

N/A

The module will be taught by means of two lectures and one lab/tutorial per week. In the lecture, students will be introduced to the key concepts, genres and ideas which characterise literature in the period between 1660 and 1770. They will learn about the historical, intellectual, literary, and cultural significance of terms such as æRestorationÆ, æAugustanÆ, and æEnlightenmentÆ, and about 17the and 18th century literary debates about liberty, slavery, and the individual. In tutorials they will be able to discuss these concepts with their tutors, and to make themselves aware of methodological and scholarly debates in Restoration and Augustan Literary studies, as well as methodologies of documentary and archive research, which will be discussed and work-shopped in these small-group lab environments.