In class tomorrow (Friday), we'll be stepping back from the close reading of texts and themes and trying to identify some of the "big-picture" issues that tie together texts and readings from the independent units and the reading that your instructor has assigned.
In preparation for that activity, consider this question: If you were to throw out the syllabus and the titles for the independent units but keep all the readings and organize the course around them, what would the big headings on your syllabus? What are the particular themes, topics, or concerns that you could use to group sets of readings and lectures within this array of texts? What might you need to add from beyond what we've read?
Respond to this post by identifying one particular theme/issue/concern that you think should be central to the study of later C18 literature (now that you've learned more about it)--and the particular readings that speak to it.
Deadline: Friday (3/20), 10am.
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2 comments:
Looking back at the independent units, one thing I noticed was that (in most cases) each unit contains a selection that looks to the past in one way or another. "The Ruins of Rome" uses the Roman Empire to look at present day England, "Bristowe Tragedie" seems to be influenced by Chaucer or the literature of his time, and Jack the giant Killer, though written in 1711, is written as an Arthurian folktale. I find it interesting that writers we are reading still looked back to these literary traditions in this period of change. Perhaps this goes along with the old cliche that we must know/be aware of the past to understand the present/future?
To provide the class with more of a structure, perhaps starting not with the *survivors* list, but with an important topic that many of the survivors write about, a creation of a unique English literary experience/heritage. Many of the survivors focus on the literature of the past that built up English lit, and some focus on how literature will come. Either way many of the works we have read address this concept.
By introducing the survivors this way, the class might find that it is easier to identify more of what later C18 literature is about, rather than who it was about.
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