Primary texts marked (*) are in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. I (8th or 9th edition)
Please use the specified editions of the longer prose works.
The remaining texts are available online (eg. Literature Online, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, The Spectator Text Project). Links to the online versions will be provided on Fronter.
Textbook (obligatory secondary reading):
- Paul Goring, Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture (London: Continuum, 2008)
Poems:
- Abraham Cowley, “To the Royal Society”
- John Dryden, from Annus Mirabilis (*); "Mac Flecknoe" (*)
- Alexander Pope, “Epistle to Miss Blount”
- Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (*)
Play:
- John Gay, The Beggar's Opera (*)
Prose:
- John Dryden, from “A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire” (*); Preface to Ovid’s Epistles
- Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, Norton Critical Edition
- Mary Astell, from Some Reflections Upon Marriage (*)
- Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal” (*); Gulliver's Travels, Norton Critical Edition
- John Arbuthnot, Alexander Pope, et al., from The Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus (chapters i-iv, vii-xi, xvii)
- Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders, Norton Critical Edition
From The Spectator:
- No. 10 The aims of the Spectator (Joseph Addison) (*)
- No. 49 On coffee-houses (Richard Steele)
- No. 69 The Royal Exchange (Addison) (*)
- No. 408 On passion and reason (Alexander Pope)
- No. 411 On the pleasures of the imagination (Addison) (*)
- No. 519 On the scale of being (Addison) (*)
From The Female Spectator, vol 3, book xiii (Eliza Haywood on news and gossip)
From The Idler, No. 31 (Samuel Johnson on idleness) (*)