British Literary Traditions II

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

In this course we will read a rich variety of British literature from the 1660s to as close to the present moment as time allows. The aim of the course is to give students a sense of the trajectory of British literary history during these turbulent centuries. We will examine the ways that British literature of this period reflects major cultural and political changes, as well as historical developments such as the English Civil war and Restoration, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the rise and fall of the British empire, and the first and second World Wars. We will read poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfiction prose. Authors will include but are not necessarily limited to William Wycherly, Jonathan Swift, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Bronte, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and W. H. Auden.