Repères culturels

This course will look at the profound changes which marked British literature from the Restoration to the beginning of the Romantic Age and contributed to the cultural shaping of the country. The first half of the century (the ‘Augustan Age’) saw a revival of classical standards in prose and verse, appealing to reason to edify, amuse and criticise. With the reopening of theatres in 1660, new forms of drama also emerged, especially the “comedy of manners”, which reflected on the corrupt morals and hypocrisy rife in the upper-classes. Satire and parody thus became the main literary weapons during the Enlightenment period. The rise of the middle-class, the development of newspapers, the increase in literacy, together with the domination of Empiricism in philosophy and science and a new interest in feelings led to the invention of the ‘novel’. The latter not only appealed to wider audiences than previous literary genres but offered unprecedented insight into contemporary British society and history. Finally, in the second half of the century (the ‘Age of Sensibility’), public concerns yielded to more private ones and reason gradually lost ground to sensibility and imagination, thus paving the way to Romanticism.

Session 1 :

Étudiants régime général et régime spécial : Contrôle terminal : QCM en ligne 30 mn

Session 2 (« rattrapage ») :

Étudiants régime général et régime spécial: QCM en ligne 30 mn

Organisations des enseignements

12 séances de CM de 1 heure hebdomadaire.

Ouvrages/textes au programme :

The texts, authors and literary movements on the syllabus will be studied from both a historical and aesthetic approach. A corpus of documents and extracts for study will be placed on e-campus.

Bibliographie complémentaire :

•  Goring, Paul. Eighteenth-century literature and culture, Continuum : 2008

• Novak, Maximillian E. Eighteenth-centuryEnglish literature, Macmillan : 1983
• Richetti, John (ed.). The Cambridge companion to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, Cambridge university press : 1996
• Richetti, John (ed.). The Cambridge history of English literature, 1660-1780, Cambridge University Press : 2005
• Richter, David H. (ed.). Ideology and form in Eighteenth-century literature,Texas Tech University Press : 1999
• Sambrook, James. TheEighteenth Century : the Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, 1700-1789, Longman : 1993 (2e éd.)