Course details
Name: ENGL - 455
Title: RESTORATION AND 18TH-CENTURY DRAMA
Section: 01
Semester: Spring - 2018
Credits: 3
Description:
First off: all texts for this course are available online (mostly through Google Books: that's the benefit of studying literature before copyright restrictions.) This course focuses on another spectacular part of the 18th century, its dramas, which include intrigues, sensuality, & a fight or two. This is the age of the libertine. The Restoration of Charles II in 1660 to the throne of what soon became Great Britain overthrew Puritanical laws, allowing for the reopening of the theaters, where women finally worked as actresses. The 18th century globally includes a time of technological change, nearly constant war, & Enlightened discourse that challenged traditions, culminating in the American & French Revolutions. In response to such turbulence, the plays of this period reflect (& sometimes & in some ways critique) a public sphere that increasingly identified with pleasure & leisure. The first unit explores Restoration drama through Aphra Behn's play, The Rover, Wycherly's The Country Wife, &/or Otway's Venice Preserv'd. The second unit covers hits of the 18th-century stage such as: She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith; A Bold Stroke for a Wife, by Susannah Centlivre; &/or John Gay's Beggar's Opera. The final unit covers bourgeois drama, such as George Lillo's The London Merchant, & Lessing's Emilia Galotti. Students will leave this course with a better appreciation for the ways in which drama represents audiences' & dramatists' pursuit of happiness before 1800.
This course takes place asynchronously online. There will be three contact points per week: a post due Mondays at 11:59pm, responses to those posts due Tuesdays by 11:59pm, and a quiz or another form of response due by Thursdays at 11:59pm. These activities will be designed to match the time that students spend in class each week, 150 minutes, but do not include the time it takes to prepare for class (reading + homework).
I am offering an online course because students have asked for more online courses in order to balance their commitments to work, school, and/or family, and because there is a shortage of classroom space on campus. However, online courses can be much more challenging than face-to-face courses because they demand that students become self-learners, and students must participate in every single class. I recommend that students enrolling in this course have at least 60 credits, and a 3.0 GPA in the major. Students who are new to the university and struggling in the major may have a very difficult time with the online format of the course; the drop-out and failure rate for students in online courses is higher than in face-to-face courses. Please seriously consider whether this is a format that best fits your needs as a learner.
Last updated on 2017-10-16 By
Nielsen Wendy (nielsenw)
Schedule:
Graduation requirements:
- Any Literature (1e)
- Genre Study (Drama)
- Pre-1800 (1b)
- Pre-1900 (1c)
- Pre-1800 British (TE 1b)
Teaching Faculty: Nielsen Wendy (nielsenw)
Is course canceled: No