From Restoration poets and playwrights Dryden, Rochester and Behn, through to the great eighteenth-century novelists and satirists Richardson, Burney and Defoe, this volume discusses the key literary developments of the age. Covering important topics of debate, such as trade, expansion and slavery, nature, liberty, and print culture, this York Notes Companion also incorporates relevant critical theory throughout for a complete and wide-ranging introduction.
Part One: Introduction
Part Two: A cultural background
Part Three: Text, Writers and Contexts
Verse: John Dryden, Samuel Johnson and John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
Extended commentary: Wilmot, The Imperfect Enjoyment (1680)
Drama: Aphra Behn, William Congreve and Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Extended commentary: Behn, The Rover (1677-81)
Political and social satire: Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift and Mary Wortley Montagu
Extended commentary: Pope: The Rape of the Lock (1712-4)
Pastoral/Anti-Pastoral Poetry: James Thomson, Oliver Goldsmith, George Crabbe and William Cowper
Extended commentary: Crabbe, The Village (1783)
The Novel, Part I: John Bunyan, Eliza Haywood, Samuel Richardson and Fanny Burney
Extended commentary: Haywood, Fantomina (1725)
The Novel Part II: Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Laurence Sterne
Extended commentary: Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1759-67)
Part Four: Critical theories and debates
Man, Nature and Liberty
Gender and Sexuality
Trade, Colonial Expansion and Slavery
A Culture of Print
Part Five: References and resources
Timeline
Further reading
Index
