ENG 346 Eighteenth-Century Literature in the Digital Age: Gender, Genre, and Engagement

The literature of the eighteenth century (1660-1800) reflects, shapes, or informs the radical changes in society, culture, and politics during the period. This course will focus on literature related to one or more of those changes: 1) the satirical attack on apparent disorder and chaos; 2) the abandonment of cynicism for sentiment; 3) the increasing emphasis on individual feeling as opposed to reason; 4) the desire to ground ideas in experience rather than notion and theory; 5) the search for a balance between self-interest and the social good. Writers react to these changes with irony, satire, comedy, biography, novels, comedies of manners, and evocations of sentiment and feeling. The more important writers include Dryden, Pope, Swift, Defoe, Johnson, Fielding, Richardson, Fanny Burney, and Jane Austen.

OWU Units: 1.00. Crosslisting(s): None. Prerequisite(s): None. Corequisite(s): None. Antirequisite(s): None. Fee: None. Core Competency: Examine Power and Inequities. Offered: TBD.