This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
This module investigates Britons’ complex aspirations during the age of Enlightenment: wealth and politeness, adventure and the cult of sensibility, collecting rare commodities, seeking ‘extreme experiences’, discoursing on sympathy while owning slaves. What was the British empire that necessitated anti-colonial resistance? How did a backward island nation become an imperial power? We will explore fiction, travel writing, political theory and philosophy. Novels, Oriental fantasy, explorations of the Ottoman empire, Continental Europe, and the South Seas, and Black Atlantic writing (by slaves and freed people) will be featured. How did new styles of masculinity and femininity and new ideas about gender and sexuality emerge by means of urbanisation, global exploration, and mercantile capital? We will also reflect upon methods of historical recovery and approaches to texts of the past. The eighteenth century was a period of dynamic change and radical social upheaval that has left us with various legacies whose effects are still being felt today.
One two hour seminar per week
Total Contact Hours: 20
Private Study Hours: 280
Total Study Hours: 300
Assignment (5,000 words) – 100%
Jane Austen, (2003). Mansfield Park. London: Penguin
William Beckford, (2013). Vathek. Oxford: Oxford University Press
William Dalrymple, (2007). In Xanadu. New York and London: Harper Perrenial
Olaudah Equiano, (1998). The Interesting Narrative. London: Penguin
Jonathan Lamb, Vanessa Smith, and Nicholas Thomas, eds., (2001). Exploration and Exchange: A South Seas Anthology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press
Edward W. Said, (2003). Orientalism. London: Penguin
Laurence Sterne, (2008). A Sentimental Journey Oxford: Oxford University Press
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, (2013). The Turkish Embassy Letters. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press
Evliya Çelebi, (2011). An Ottoman Traveller: Selections from the 'Book of Travels' of Evliya Çelebi, London: Eland
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
8. The intended subject specific learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
8.1 Demonstrate their understanding of eighteenth-century literature and its relationship to the history of empire, colonialism, subjectivity, and sensibility in comparative perspective, including the perspectives of slaves and colonised and Indigenous peoples;
8.2 Critically engage with texts and historical concepts and debates, including theories of historical repetition and reenactment, by applying and interrogating theoretical models from postcolonial and other forms of critical and cultural studies;
8.3 Demonstrate their understanding of the origins of modern concepts of empire, slavery, colonisation, the market, sensibility, and identity, and their relationship to the histories of colonised people and aesthetic forms.
9. The intended generic learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
9.1 Demonstrate their ability to apply new conceptual terms or frameworks to their study of literary and other cultural texts and to incorporate these in their own research;
9.2 Demonstrate awareness of the complexities of historical and theoretical contexts, ideas, and texts;
9.3 Demonstrate confident communication skills and enhance their ability to convey new or complex ideas in written or oral form with clarity;
9.4 Demonstrate the ability to devise, undertake, and complete research projects, including regular documentation and evaluation.
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