"Culture as Performance in the Early English Enlightenment"

The word person is Latin ... which signifies the face, as persona in Latin signifies the disguise, or outward appearance of a man, counterfeited on the stage.... So that a person is the same that an actor is, both on the stage and in common conversation; and to personate is to act or represent himself or another.... Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ch 16

We begin our study of this time “mirabilis”—of wonders—with a consideration of English Restoration literature and culture as a science of theatrics, a theatrics of science. Next, our study of fiction focuses on the urgent needs of writers to find ways to articulate questions of what constituted truth in a time when science, civil wars & regicide, the plague, and fire that burned the City to the ground sent absolutes crashing. In the same moment, though, we notice London arising, phoenix-like, to become an “emporium for the whole earth,” the center of an England that was shaping itself as an empire of trade. Ah, what was it to be in London? Why, it was to be in theatre!

Genres we’ll study include: On stage: Heroic tragedy, Restoration comedy, the first musical comedies, comic opera. In poetry: erotic gender play, ironic gender wars, satiric political and social commentaries. In fiction: the development of “types” such as journalistic essay, erotic novella, travelogue, and satire. Authors include Margaret Cavendish, John Dryden, Aphra Behn, John Wilmot (Earl of Rochester), Daniel Defoe, Eliza Haywood, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and John Gay. Requirements include brief reflections, historical research report, final exam, term paper. Class project in readers theatre: students may choose to act (very relaxed mode) or otherwise contribute to the production of theatre. Although English 554 is linked with English 454, we may opt to meet occasionally as a separate graduate seminar group (times to be arranged at first class meeting).

Course syllabus, pdf