English 123 - Spring, 2014

Topics in 18th Century British Literature

Class Information

Instructor: Johns, Alessa
Time: TR 12:10-1:30
Location: 118 Olson

Description

Enlightenment and Disaster


In this course we will analyze cultural responses to disasters in the age of Enlightenment. Scientists and social scientists have dominated discussions of past catastrophe; humanists have until recently had surprisingly little to say about events that have consistently inspired literary and artistic representations. Why? We will seek to answer this question as we read works of such authors as Dryden, Burnet, Pepys, Defoe, Voltaire, Goethe, and Kleist. Other issues we will address include: eighteenth-century fascination with disaster tourism and the thrill of experiencing sites of destruction, whether first-hand or through the burgeoning literature of travel; developing distinctions between scientific and humanistic discourses; the challenges of representing disaster in an ‟Age of Reason”; the extent to which national identities emerge from responses to calamity; and the role discourses of religion, science, and politics play in the anticipation and aftermath of catastrophic events. Secondary texts in the emerging field of disaster theory will aid our endeavor, as will selected essays in Dreadful Visitations; readings from contemporary critics will offer opportunities for interrogating perceptions of eighteenth-century disaster in our own time.

Grading

In-class assignments and quizzes (15%), two papers (40%), two exams (30%), and attendance and participation (15%).

Texts

Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe
The Storm, Daniel Defoe
The Earthquake in Chile , Heinrich von Kleist
Candide , Voltaire
Ecology of Fear, Mike Davis
Illness as Metaphor, Susan Sontag
Dreadful Visitations, Alessa Johns, ed.
A Course Reader , Excerpts from Dryden, Pepys, Sherlock, Stillingfleet, Piozzi, etc.
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley