ENGL 527

Spring 2020 All Classes

All Classes

Seminar in 18th C Literature

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Credit: 4 hours.

May be repeated if topics vary. Prerequisite: A college course devoted entirely to an aspect of eighteenth-century studies or consent of instructor.

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ENGL 527 class schedule data for spring 2020
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	32265	Lecture-Discussion	R	1:00PM -3:50PM	R	125 English Building	Markley, R	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/21/20-05/06/20 Section Title: Asia and Africa in British Section Info: Throughout the long eighteenth century, Great Britain’s economic status depended as much on its trade to Asia as it did on its exploiting its North American colonies. This seminar will focus on the ways that a wide variety of literary texts—fictional and non-fictional— represented the moral, economic, and political consequences of British imperial and commercial growth. Although there is a good deal of excellent scholarly work on the slave trade among Africa, England, and its American colonies, this seminar will consider this horrific slave trade in the context of British efforts in South and East Asia to establish—and dominate--commercial networks. We will pay particular attention to the often furious debates over the power of the East India Company both before and after it established its political control over West Bengal. Drawing on the work of a variety of postcolonial theorists, we will read and discuss some important texts of the period as well as a number of narratives that traditionally have not made it into the canon. If you take this seminar, you will be encouraged to explore projects that resonate beyond the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Those students who are not primarily scholars of the early modern period or eighteenth century should feel free to use this seminar in ways that will further their own interests and research. Some of the topics we will address include the literature of international commerce and its effects on the literature of the period; reactions to the European slave trade in Africa and the Americas; recent trends in postcolonial criticism, including second-generation postcolonial approaches by Srinivas Aravamudan, Rajani Sudan, Eugenia Zuroski, and others; and the limitations of British commercial and naval power in in the Pacific and the Far East. Readings will include Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko; Daniel Defoe’s Captain Singleton; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters; Oladuah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative; and Abu Taleb Khan's Travels; and selections from important historical texts by Peter Heylyn, William Dampier; the Scots merchant Alexander Hamilton; William Bosman; and others. Restriction(s): Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.