London Life through the eyes of a Seventeenth Century bystander,

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

In this course students will be introduced to, and get to know, the renowned Londoner, Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) and his personal diary. Pepys's diary, only deciphered since the nineteenth-century and even then highly censored, is one of great monuments of English writing. From 1660 to 1669 Pepys, a naval administrator, kept a very personal record of his private life and the public affairs that surrounded him. Through the diary we get a first hand eye-witness account of the execution of Charles I, the Cromwellian Interregnum, the Restoration of Charles II, the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of London of 1666 and we get a compelling front row seat viewing the sexual mores, digestive health, vices and (occasional) virtues of this upwardly mobile Englishman. This course will combine weekly reading of excerpts of Pepys's diary (all provided by Professor Rapple) with periodical trips surveying the traces of Pepys's London, from his parish church in Hart Street through the places where he did business - the London Exchange and Westminster Hall, to the epicentre of English naval power, Greenwich - as well as the places where he witnessed the political and cultural events of his time - the Banqueting Hall, St James's Park, and the streets of the old City of London. Pepys provides the best way of suffusing yourself in the relationship between the environment of seventeenth-century London and historical events. Students will read portions of Pepys's diary and will each produce an independently researched project based on an aspect of Pepys's life and its significance.