Libertine Literature 1660-1690

Course details || Module aims || Content || Learning and teaching || Learning outcomes || Assessment

Course details

• (Special Subject, Year 3, Semester 1)

• Credits: 20

• Convenor: Professor Martin Dzelzaninis

• Course code: EN3172

Module aims

This module examines many of the most important libertine works written in the years following the restoration of King Charles II in 1660.  It looks in detail at the philosophy, religious views, and sexual morality of the libertines and the way in which their values were assimilated to and represented in the poetry and drama of the period - values which were simultaneously reactionary and subversive and which offer a provocative commentary on our own. 

A distinctive feature of the course is the sheer variety of genres and modes of writing with which it deals: discursive prose, translation, verse epistle, satire, burlesque, farce, comedy, and tragedy. 

Themes and topics to be examined include: religion, scepticism, nature, appetite, obscenity, 'pornopolitics', the figure of the rake, whores and courtesans, male and female sexuality, money, interest, honour, masquerade, social spaces, and city versus country.

Content

Special attention is given to:

• the poetry of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester;
• a detailed examination of the Rochesterian Farce of Sodom;
• Henry Neville's The Isle of Pines;
• selected plays by John Dryden, Thomas Shadwell, Aphra Behn, Thomas Otway, and Thomas Southerne. 

We begin, however, with two key chapters on the passions and liberty from Thomas Hobbes's heterodox and corrosive work of political philosophy, Leviathan (1651), which largely underpinned the thinking of the libertines. You are advised that the course requires you to engage with some sexually explicity material.

Learning and teaching

The module will be taught in weekly seminars. Discussion will focus on a selection of primary texts (which students will be expected to prepare beforehand), supported by secondary reading and appropriate visual materials.  Each student will give a ten-minute oral presentation on a primary text as the basis for group discussion.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module you should have...

• engaged with a variety of Restoration genres and developed an awareness of the critical issues associated with each of them;
• developed an understanding of how philosophical materials were exploited for literary purposes;
• acquired a critical perspective on the deployment of sexually explicit material in literature;
• become broadly familiar with the historical and political contours of the Restoration period;
• reached the point where you can bring these attainments to bear in formulating an independent set of arguments in relation to a particular aspect of the course both in oral presentations and written work.

Assessment

One 5,000-word essay.

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