Across the period 700-1700 the shapes of British culture were absorbed from different centers of Western Europe. When these cultural forms arrive in Britain, they meet and mix with established cultures. This course will delineate the principal cultural forces (e.g. religious, political, social) that shaped England in particular. We will look to the ways in which those vibrant yet opposed forces find expression in the shape, or form, of literary works.

What is the function of literary texts in moments, from Plato to the Russian Revolution, that promise total, enlightened societal transformation? Each week, this course will focus on two texts related to selected “revolutionary” moments, one philosophical and one literary. Literary texts do not participate easily in the revolutionary order. They resist the textual simplicities of philosophy. Which do we trust: philosophy or literature? Texts include many found in traditional “Great Books” courses: Plato, Virgil, Augustine, Dante, Luther, Milton, Swift, Rousseau, Twain, Kant, Marx,...

English literary history shies away from one of cultural history’s most momentous revolutions: the Reformation. This course looks to a series of discursive areas (e.g. literature, theology, politics) to shape that literary history. We will look to both canonical and non-canonical texts, from Chaucer to Shakespeare; each session will be grounded in a Houghton-possessed book.

Across the period 700-1700 the shapes of British culture were absorbed from different centers of Western Europe. These cultural forms are conflicted among themselves, and conflicted across time. This course will delineate the principal cultural forces (e.g. religious, political, social) that shaped England in particular. We will look to the ways in which those vibrant yet opposed forces find expression in the shape, or form, of literary works.