Course title: British Neoclassicism (1660-1798/1784)

2nd year, English Studies

Taught by: Dr. Veronica Popescu (lecture) and Dr. Florina Nastase/Drd. Ioana Baciu (seminar)
Office hours: Odd Wednesdays, 4-6 p.m.
(Only by appointment. Please send an e-mail at veronica.t_popescu@yahoo.com 1-2 days in
advance.)

Syllabus
Week 1
A general presentation of the Neoclassical Age, also known as Enlightenment, from a political,
social and cultural point of view (I). Key political events: The Civil War (1642-1651) and the
consequences of the war. The Restoration and the reign of Charles II; the Glorious Revolution
(1688) and the Bill of Rights (1689). The end of the rule of the Stuarts and the beginning of the
era of the Hanoverian kings. Great Britain as a growing colonial empire.
[introductory seminar]
Weeks 2 & 3
A general presentation of the Neoclassical Age (II). The spirit of the age, and the main features
of Neoclassical art, particularly literature. John Milton as a key personality of mid-17th-century
English society and culture. Milton’s main literary works. Paradise Lost (1667) as a masterpiece
of heroic poetry. Milton’s influence on romantic poets and the Byronic hero; Milton’s style.
[seminar: John Milton - Paradise Lost (1667)]
Week 4
The Restoration Period (1660-1688/1700). John Dryden as a major representative of Restoration
poetry, drama and criticism. The comedy of manners: definition, main features and
representatives (George Etherege, William Wycherley, John Vanbrugh, and William Congreve).
William Congreve’s The Way of the World (1700) as a literary accomplishment.
[seminar: Discussion of Stage Beauty (2004)]
Week 5
Restoration prose: types of prose (essays, letters, diaries, religious writing, fiction). Samuel
Pepys’s and John Bunyan’s as main Restoration prose writers. Aphra Behn’s contribution.
[seminar: Alexander Pope – “The Rape of the Lock” (1712/14)]
Week 6
The Augustan Age (1700-1745/50) The spirit of the age. Major genres and main aesthetic
qualities of Augustan literature and culture. Alexander Pope and the refinement of Augustan
poetry. Pope’s main works and literary concerns. Social and political comment in The Rape of the
Lock.
[seminar: Eliza Haywood: Fantomina, Or, Love in a Maze (1725)]
Week 7
The rise of the novel in early 18th century: definition of the novel, major types, the cultural
context favouring the appearance of the novel. Daniel Defoe’s role in the development of the
novel as a popular genre.
[seminar: Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe (1719)]
Week 8
A postcolonial reading of Robinson Crusoe. Possible interpretations of the nature of the
relationship between Robinson and Friday. Other important prose writings by Defoe: Moll
Flanders (1722).
[seminar: Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe (1719)]

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Weeks 9 & 10
Moll Flanders (cont.) – a Marxist and a feminist perspective. Eliza Haywood and the feminine
perspective on the role of women in society. Jonathan Swift, or the power of wit and humour.
Swift’s involvement in matters of the soul and of the state: spiritual and political aspects of his
writings. The uses of allegory, irony, sarcasm and humour in Swift’s prose (focus on A Tale of a
Tub (1704), The Battle of the Books (1704), and Drapier’s Letters (1724).
[seminar: Jonathan Swift - Gulliver’s Travels (1726)]
Week 11
Allegory, irony, sarcasm and humour in Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” and Gulliver’s Travels
(1726). Book IV of Gulliver’s Travels – possible interpretations in the light of his other works.
[seminar: Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling (1949)]
Week 12
The Age of Johnson, or the Age of Sentiment (1750-1798 [1784]). The development of the novel
in the last decades of the 18th century: the sentimental novel and the earliest experiments with the
psychological novel. (Focus on Samuel Richardson’s contribution.)
[seminar: Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling (1949)]

Week 13
Henry Fielding and the further development of the realist novel of the 18th century.
Fielding’s theory of the novel, as presented in his preface to Joseph Andrews and in the novel
Tom Jones (his definition of the comic epic in prose or the comic romance). Redefining the hero.
Fielding’s style. The greatness of Fielding’s Tom Jones and its place in the history of the English
novel.
[seminar: Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
(1760-67)]
Week 14
Laurence Sterne, the precursor of the postmodern novel. Subjective and objective (clock
time). John Locke’s influence on Sterne. The structure of the novel; the role of digressions and
paratextual elements; the implied reader; the real and the implied author; the role of the narrator.
Sterne’s place in the English literary canon.
[seminar: final test]

Class requirements
 Attendance and class participation. Lecture attendance is not compulsory, but
it is highly recommended. Seminar attendance is compulsory. Class participation
is strongly encouraged and will be graded.
 Required readings. All texts discussed in class (seminars) are compulsory.
 Exam. There will be a two-part exam for this class: 1. Seminar (50%) – final test
(1 hour) during your last class 2. Lecture (50%) – written exam in the form of an
essay, during the regular exam session.

Bibliography
Warmly recommended readings:
Backscheider, Paula R. and Catherine Ingrassia (eds.). A companion to the eighteenth-century
English novel and culture, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005.
Daiches, David. A Critical History of English Literature, vol I, vol II, London, Secker and Warburg,
1995.
Levițchi, Leon. Istoria literaturii engleze si americane, Cluj-Napoca, vols. 1, 2 (1984, 1995).

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Macsiniuc, Cornelia. The English Eighteenth Century. The Novel in Its Beginnings, Suceava,
2003
Richetti, John. The English Novel in History, 1700-1780, London: Routledge, 1999.
Richetti, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, Cambridge
University Press, 1996.
Sanders, Andrew, The Short Oxford History of English Literature, Oxford UP, 1994./Scurta istorie
Oxford a literaturii engleze, trad. de Mihaela Anghelescu-Irimia, Editura Univers, Bucuresti, 1997

You might also be interested in some of the following:

Arthur, Paul Longley. “Fictions of Encounter: Eighteenth-Century Imaginary Voyages to the
Antipodes”, The Eighteenth Century, Vol. 49, No. 3, Reconstructing History: Literature, History,
and Anthropology in the Pacific (FALL 2008), University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 197-210.
Battestin, Martin C. (ed), Tom Jones. 20th Century Interpretations. A Collection of Critical Essays.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1968.
Bentman, Reymond. “Satiric Structure and Tone in the Conclusion of Gulliver's Travels,” Studies
in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 11, No. 3, Restoration and Eighteenth Century (Summer,
1971), pp. 535-548.
Brown, J. R., Harris B. (eds.). Restoration Theatre, London: Edward Arnold (Publishers), 1965.
Carey, David. “Reading contrapuntally. Robinson Crusoe, Slavery and Postcolonial Theory”,
Carey, Daniel, Lynn Festa, Postcolonial Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Colonialism and
Postcolonial Theory, Oxford UP, 2009, pp. 105-36.
Clark, Donald B. Alexander Pope, New York: Twayne, 1967.
Danielson, Dennis Richard (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Milton. Cambridge University
Press. 1997 (1989)
Dobrée, Bonamy. John Dryden, London: Longmans Green& Co, 1966.
Erskine-Hill, H. Jonathan Swift. Gulliver’s Travels, Cambridge UP, 1993.
Fluchère, Henri. Laurence Sterne: From Tristram to Yorick, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1960.
Forsyth, Neil. "Paradise Lost and the Origin of 'Evil': Classical or Judeo-Christian?" International
Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Spring, 2000), pp. 516-548.
Göbel, Walter. "The Suppositional Structure: Tristram Shandy as a Playful Inquiry Into Human
Nature," AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Bd. 13, H. 2 (1988), Narr Francke
Attempto Verlag GmbH Co. KGStable, pp. 155-181.
Harth, Phillip. “The Problem of Political Allegory in Gulliver's Travels,” Modern Philology, Vol. 73,
No. 4, Part 2: A Supplement to Honor Arthur Friedman (May, 1976), pp. S40-S47
Highet, Gilbert, The Anatomy of Satire. Princeton, New Jersey, 1972 (1961)
Houston, Chlöe. “Utopia, Dystopia or Anti-utopia? Gulliver’s Travels and the Utopian Mode of
Discourse,” Utopian Studies 18.3 (2007), pp. 425-42.
Israel, Jonathan I. Enlightenment Contested. Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of
Man 1670-1752. Oxford UP, 2006.
D. W. Jefferson. Laurence Sterne, London, 1957.
Kim, James. "'good cursed, bouncing losses': Masculinity, Sentimental Irony, and Exuberance in
Tristram Shandy'" The Eighteenth Century, Vol. 48, No. 1 (SPRING 2007), University of
Pennsylvania Press, pp. 3-24.
Munteanu, Romul, Literatura europeană în epoca luminilor, Ed. Enciclopedica Romana,
Bucuresti, 1971
---. Clasicism si baroc în cultura europeană în secolul al XVII-lea, Ed. Univers, Bucuresti, 1981.
Novak, Maximillian E. Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions. His Life and His Ideas, Oxford/New York:
Oxford University Press, 2001.
Popescu, Veronica. “From (Self-)trading Moll to Traded Moll, or the Radical Transformation of
Moll Flanders in Sentimental Hollywood”, Traded Women, Trading Women, ed. Gonul Bakai,
Michaela Mudure. Frankfurt am Main/Bern: Peter Lang GmbH, 2017,, pp. 253-279.
Rees, Siân. Moll: The Life and Times of Moll Flanders, London: Chatto & Windus. 2011.
Swaminathan, Srividhya: “Defoe's Alternative Conduct Manual: Survival Strategies and Female
Networks in Moll Flanders,” Eighteenth Century Fiction 15 (2), 2003, pp. 185-206.

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Tillotson, Geoffrey, On the Poetry of Pope, Oxford UP, 1967.
Watt, Jan, The Rise of the Novel (Studies on Defoe, Richardson and Fielding), Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press. 1957.
Weinbrot, H.D., Britannia’s Issue. The Rise of British Literature from Dryden to Ossian,
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
West, Russell. "To the Unknown Reader: Constructing Absent Readership in the Eighteenth-
Century Novel: Fielding, Sterne and Richardson, " AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik,
Bd. 26, H. 2 (2001), Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH Co. KG, pp. 105-123.
Zimmerman, Everett. "Tristram Shandy and Narrative Representation," The Eighteenth Century,
Vol. 28, No. 2 (Spring 1987), University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 127-147.