ENGL 527

Fall 2025 All Classes

All Classes

Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Literature

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Credit: 4 hours.

Seminar dedicated to the study of texts, genres, themes, and/or theoretical issues from the literature and culture of what is often referred to as the “long eighteenth century,” from the Restoration to the Romantic period.

May be repeated in separate terms up to 12 hours, 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 fall 2025
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	46745	Lecture-Discussion	R	2:00PM -4:20PM	M	English Building	Pollock, A	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/25/25-12/10/25 Section Info: FA25 ENGL 527 - Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Literature - Anthony Pollock - Literature and Empire in the “Age of Enlightenment” (ca. 1688-1789) - This seminar will examine the complex, multidirectional relationships between popular literary forms and the practices of empire in the historical period conventionally referred to in European history as “The Enlightenment.” On the one hand, the years 1688 and 1789 are associated with watershed moments of political revolution in England and France, whose absolutist monarchs (James II and Louis XVI) were deposed in the name of ostensibly universal principles like freedom and inalienable rights; on the other hand, these dates also mark the publication of two influential texts—Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative—which present readers with often graphic representations of both the violent imposition of Anglo-European colonial-imperial power in the Americas and West Africa and the concerted resistance to that power by these texts’ non-European protagonists and their allies. One task of this seminar will be to understand more precisely the terms of this counterintuitive simultaneity: how are we to make sense of the literary and historical co-presence of emergent Anglo-European discourses of political liberation (domestically) with the rapid expansion of Anglo-European technologies of empire (on a global scale)? We will approach this question through several analytical focus points in the primary materials: their representations of ethnography and intercultural contact zones, their promulgation and/or interrogation of orientalist ideologies and colonialist apologetics, their depictions of slavery and the plantation system, and the ecological consequences of empire on the more-than-human world, among other topics. Readings may include texts by Aphra Behn, Ottobah Cugoano, Daniel Defoe, Olaudah Equiano, Samuel Johnson, Mary Wortley Montagu, Michel de Montaigne, Jonathan Swift, and Voltaire. Requirements: participation in seminar discussions, brief weekly reading responses, one short paper, and one longer seminar paper. Restriction(s): Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign. Restricted to students in the English department.