ENGL31052 Pox and Plague: Disease and Illness in Eighteenth-Century Satire

Pox and Plague: Disease and Illness in Eighteenth-Century Satire

Course Unit Director: Dr. Noelle Dückmann Gallagher

noelle.gallagher@manchester.ac.uk

 

 

Description

In the Restoration and eighteenth century, satire was conventionally understood as a mode of literature and art designed to “cure” various social ills: poverty, vice, greed, lust, pretention, vulgarity, et cetera.  This course will explore how ideas of illness or disease—sensibility, madness, venereal disease, plague, gout, consumption—intersect with the formal and thematic development of eighteenth-century satiric literature and visual art.  We will examine works in a range of genres and media, including poetry, short prose, novels, cartoons, and engravings.

 

 

Readings: 

There are 4 books you will need to purchase or borrow for this course. Short prose, poetry, and visual materials will be available in a free course booklet.

Please note that you are strongly encouraged to use the recommended editions of these 4 texts. (Swift and Austen, in particular, have been published in editions with no footnotes, and using these editions may make your reading substantially more difficult).

                Ordering information for the recommended editions (including ISBN) is provided below, but copies will also be available for sale at Blackwell University bookshop. All other materials-- cartoons, caricatures, poetry, and short comic prose-- will be made available in a lavishly-illustrated (okay, maybe not 'lavishly') course booklet.  The course booklet will be available for free from the school office.

 

                Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub, ed. Angus Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). ISBN 9780199549788.  BUY THIS EDITION ONLY.

                Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey, ed. Ian Jack (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). ISBN 9780199537181.

                Tobias Smollett, Humphry Clinker, ed. Sean Regan (London: Penguin, 2008). ISBN 9780199537181.  If you wish to begin reading, focus on volume 1.

                Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, ed. James Kinsley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). ISBN 9780199535576. BUY THIS EDITION

 

 

 

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