ENG 361 - Seduction and Decadence in the C18th

The Eighteenth Century was not just a time of powdered wigs and bone-crunching gowns.  It was a time of deception, seduction, and decadence writ large.  By studying a variety of texts like mock epics, trenchant satires, feisty novels, caustic engravings, flippant opera, and bawdy comedies, we will explore this culture of privilege and irreverence built in part on a growing consumer culture that was underwritten by an expanding empire as well as class and gender disparities. Raunchiness was both celebrated and satirized in a culture where people across the classes were as consumable as the newly fashionable chocolate sold in the classy hubs of decadence and debauchery - the infamous chocolate houses –and the result was as bitter, if you couldn’t afford the sugar.

Fulfills the Historical Approaches requirement of the English major.
Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement.
Satisfies a requirement in the Global Literary Theory interdisciplinary minor.

 

Prerequisites & Notes
First-year students require permission of the instructor.