ENGLIT II TOPICS LIST

1. The context of Restoration literature. 1.1. Political. 1.2. Social. 1.3. Literary. 2. The great Puritan writers. 2.1. John Milton. 2.1.1. Early life & early poetry. LAllegro, Il Penseroso. Chief polemical tracts. Areopagitica. 2.1.2. Paradise Lost: aim, topic & message. The character of Satan. 2.2. John Bunyan. 2.2.1. Religious background. 2.2.2. The Pilgrims Progress. Bunyans use of allegory. 3. The great British thinkers of the 17th & 18 c. 3.1. The evolution of political thought: Thomas Hobbes Leviathan. 3.2. The Empiricists: John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume. 4. Restoration poetry: basic names, titles & characteristics. Its topical quality. 4.1. Samuel Butlers Hudibras: story, style, references to contemporary events. 4.2. John Dryden: the emblematic poet of the age. Absalom and Achitophel. 4.3. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. 5. Restoration Drama. 5.1. Heroic tragedy. Innovations in form and style. Dryden. 5.2. Restoration comedy. 5.2.1. Historical context, general characteristics. 5.2.2. Major representatives: Wycherley, Etheredge, Farquhar, Congreve. 6. Neoclassicism in the English verse. Alexander Pope. 6.1. Major traits of style. 6.2. Essay on Criticism. 6.3. The Rape of the Lock. 7. Daniel Defoe & the rise of the English novel. 7.1. Robinson Crusoe: story & message/s. Utopian and travelogue aspects. Postcolonial interpretations. 7.2. The History of Moll Flanders: an early social-problem novel. 8. Jonathan Swift. 8.1. His career as a polemicist: A Tale of a Tub, The Battle of the Books, A Modest Proposal. 8.2. Gullivers Travels: fiction, allegory & political satire. 9. Samuel Richardson & the evolution of the psychological novel. 9.1. Pamela. 9.2. Clarissa. 9.3. Sir Charles Grandison. 9.4. The professional and popular reception of Richardsons novels. 10. Henry Fielding. 10.1. Joseph Andrews. 10.2. The History of Tom Jones. 11. The early English novel of adventure. Tobias Smollett. 11.1. Basic characteristics of style.

11.2. Roderick Random, Humphrey Clinker. 12. Laurence Sterne & the novels parody of itself. Tristram Shandy. 13. Samuel Johnson. 13.1. His role as a major literary figure of the period. 13.2. Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. 13.3. Johnsons dictionary. 14. Later 18th-century drama: Richard Brinsley Sheridan. 14.1. The School for Scandal. 14.2. The Critic. 15. Oliver Goldsmith. 15.1. She Stoops to Conquer. 15.2. The Vicar of Wakefield.