HKU Moodle

The eighteenth century is often regarded as the moment at which modern literary culture begins. The sentimental novel, poetic satire, travel writing, the periodical essay, and the slave biography are among the new modes of writing to surface in this period. This century also witnessed a large expansion of the print market and the beginning of a gradual commercialisation of reading culture. This course will survey the developments in British literature and culture during this period where social relations were being reconstituted through new norms of polite civility, and the emerging ideology of the sovereign individual. We will read poetry, drama, and prose fiction in light of the period’s key concerns, including the Enlightenment, the Self, and the Public Sphere. In particular, our discussions will focus on the theme of Enlightenment, and the new ideals attached to reason and rationality as we survey texts that explore areas of life that exist in tense opposition to the ideals of the enlightenment project, such as imperialism; slavery; sentimentality; luxury; superstition; madness; revolution; and genocide.

This subject introduces students to the great revolutions of the English seventeenth century through the lens of John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost (1667, 1674). Our focus will be on genre, poetic devices, characterization, and interpretative puzzles as we place Milton in the larger literary and political culture of Early Modern England. Weekly lectures and discussion groups will offer a close reading of each of the 12 books of the poem in the context of significant aesthetic, political, economic, theological and epistemological breaks exemplified by the English Revolution of 1642. These include the experiments with new forms of government such as the Republic and Constitutional Monarchy; transformations in attitudes toward gender, as well as sexual and familial relationships; the expansion and diversification of radical Protestant and Puritan religious sects; the origins of modern science and technology with Bacon, Galileo and Descartes; and the development and regulation of new forms of print culture.