English 259 - Pope, Swift, and Their Circle

Nora Crow

TTh 10:30 - 11:50 a.m.

Designed as a small discussion group, this class will focus on the two masters of English satire-perhaps the greatest in English literary history. Because the age of Swift and Pope, the so-called “Augustan Age,” saw the mingling of brilliant men of letters with astute political wheeler-dealers, the reading will include a number of authors, familiar with each other, who are of historical as well as literary interest. Besides the verse and prose of Swift and Pope, we shall read the elegant essayist Joseph Addison (also Under-Secretary of State); the journalist, novelist, and spy Daniel Defoe; the dashing diplomat and poet Matthew Prior; the mawkish Ambrose Philips; and the true originator of the womanizing Macheath, John Gay. These writers will help to define for us the Augustan Age as a period of obliquity and ambivalence, coarseness and urbanity, raillery and rage. The instructor will assign one satire in imitation of Swift and one long paper of 10 to 12 pages. This class satisfies the requirement for a course before 1832.