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During her long and varied career, Eliza Haywood acted onstage, worked as a publisher and bookseller, and wrote prolifically in many genres, from novels of seduction to essays in periodicals. Her works illuminate the private emotional lives of people in eighteenth-century England, invite readers to consider how women in that culture defined themselves and criticized oppression, and help us better understand the social debates of the period.
This volume addresses a broad range of Haywood’s works, providing literary and sociopolitical context from writings by Aphra Behn, Samuel Richardson, Samuel Johnson, and others, and from contemporary documents such as advice manuals and court records. The first section, “Materials,” identifies high-quality editions, reliable biographical sources, and useful background information. The second section, “Approaches,” suggests ways to help students engage with Haywood’s work, gain a nuanced understanding of the time period, work with primary documents, and participate in digital humanities projects.
Praised by Voltaire and admired by Pushkin, Évariste Parny (1753–1814) was born on the island of Reunion, which is east of Madagascar, and educated in France. His life as a soldier and government administrator allowed him to travel to Brazil, Africa, and India. Though from the periphery of France’s colonial empire, he ultimately became a member of the Académie Française. Despite his reaching that pinnacle of respectability, some of his poetry was banned after his death.
This edition includes poems from the Poésies érotiques and Élégies, which established Parny’s reputation; the Chansons madécasses (“Madagascar Songs”), which were influential in the development of the prose poem; five of his published letters, written in a mixture of prose and verse; the narrative poem Le voyage de Céline; and selections from his sardonic, anticlerical later poetry. A substantial introduction discusses Parny’s poetry in connection with its literary context and the themes of gender, race, and postcoloniality.
The works of Henry Fielding, though written nearly three hundred years ago, retain their sense of comedy and innovation in the face of tradition, and they easily engage the twenty-first-century student with many aspects of eighteenth-century life: travel, inns, masquerades, political and religious factions, the ’45, prisons and the legal system, gender ideals and realities, social class.
Part 1 of this volume, “Materials,” discusses the available editions of Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, Shamela, Jonathan Wild, and Amelia; suggests useful critical and contextual works for teaching them; and recommends helpful audiovisual and electronic resources. The essays of part 2, “Approaches,” demonstrate that many of the methods and models used for one novel—the romance tradition, Fielding’s legal and journalistic writing, his techniques as a playwright, the ideas of Machiavelli—can be adapted to others.
The considerable contributions of British women playwrights of the Restoration and eighteenth century, long unavailable, have now inspired numerous anthologies, editions, and modern-day productions. As these works continue to gain recognition and secure a more prominent place in college curriculums, teachers face the challenge of introducing these rediscovered works to students and explaining how they fit into the period’s dramatic tradition. This volume aims to help instructors present a clearer sense of this body of work in the undergraduate and graduate classroom.
The volume opens with background essays on the history of women in theater, including the first appearance of actresses on the stage, the earliest professional women playwrights, and their relationships with critics, audiences, and the theater manager David Garrick. Contributors then focus on individual playwrights, from Aphra Behn and Mary Pix to Hannah Cowley and Elizabeth Inchbald, and explore these women’s political, protofeminist, critical, and moralist agendas. Discussions of Frances Burney and Eliza Haywood, authors of both novels and plays, raise the question of genre. Comparative approaches offer ways of pairing plays in the classroom, following themes such as masquerade and cross-dressing through the works of female dramatists and those of their male counterparts. Other essays present methods for using these writers and their works in British literature and history courses, surveys of drama and theater history, and introductions to women’s literature.
In the aftermath of the French Revolution, three women who have fled France—the straitlaced aristocrat Emilie, her lighthearted maid Joséphine, and the worldly Constance—try to make new lives for themselves in Altendorf, Germany. Their experiences, difficulties, and choices address the philosophical question, Are moral theories adequate guides to good conduct?
In her introduction to this late-eighteenth-century novel by Charrière, Emma Rooksby discusses the sentimental tradition, Enlightenment ideas, epistolary fiction, Charrière’s career, and the difficult situation of women and women writers in postrevolutionary France.
Isabelle de Charrière, born in 1740 to a Dutch aristocratic family, wrote several novels critical of rigid social conventions. She lived most of her life in Switzerland.
The novels of Samuel Richardson can be demanding for the student today because of their focus on virtue, their embodiment of eighteenth-century social conventions, and their sheer length. Although the critical scholarship on Richardson is thriving, there is little work on teaching his novels. This volume turns the challenges of his novels into opportunities for inventive pedagogy.
Part 1, “Materials,” assesses available editions of Richardson’s works; evaluates background materials; and reviews biographies, critical studies, readings on eighteenth-century literature, and Web resources. A survey of experienced instructors identifies successful assignments for both undergraduate and graduate students.
Part 2, “Approaches,” is divided into four sections, one on the background of Richardson’s novels and one each on Clarissa, Pamela, and Sir Charles Grandison. Contributors explore the meaning of religion to Richardson’s characters and to his contemporaries; discuss how his work as a printer influenced the physical appearance of his novels; show how to engage students in the debates about feminism and patriarchal ideology in the novels; and consider why Richardson revised so extensively. Classroom exercises use the Web to compare online editions of Richardson’s novels.
The girl Beauty and the boy Love are betrothed to each other as children. But Beauty violates the custom of the tribe by falling in love with him, and Love must undergo the trials of a journey to the Land of the Heart to prove himself worthy—a journey to realization of both his and Beauty’s true nature.
The Turkish verse romance Beauty and Love, written in 1783 by Şeyh Galip, head of an Istanbul center of Rumi’s order of the Whirling Dervishes, is an innovative interpretation of the Islamic love tale as a story of the action of God’s qualities in the world. With its stunning imagery, fast-moving plot, and nonchalant, erudite humor, it is widely known as the greatest work of Ottoman literature.
In her introduction Victoria Rowe Holbrook discusses the heritage of Ibn Arabi and Rumi in Ottoman thought, the traditions of verse romance and allegory, Indian style imagery, and Galip’s political loyalties.
The girl Hüsn and the boy Aşk are betrothed to each other as children. But Hüsn violates the custom of the tribe by falling in love with him, and Aşk must undergo the trials of a journey to Diyar-i-Kalp, the Land of the Heart, to prove himself worthy—a journey to realization of both his and Hüsn’s true nature.
The Turkish verse romance Hüsn ü Aşk, written in 1783 by Şeyh Galip, head of an Istanbul center of Rumi’s order of the Whirling Dervishes, is an innovative interpretation of the Islamic love tale as a story of the action of God’s qualities in the world. With its stunning imagery, fast-moving plot, and nonchalant, erudite humor, it is widely known as the greatest work of Ottoman literature.
Long a centerpiece of eighteenth-century literary studies and a significant influence on the fiction of its day, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe remains a standard text for teaching the period and continues to inspire popular adaptations and imitations, from children’s books to adventure films to reality TV. In teaching the work, instructors are challenged to separate the popular images of Crusoe from the text and its two sequels, creating distance from the myth without losing sight of why it is so powerful. Students need guidance in recognizing the way the novel blends genres—romance, travel tale, spiritual biography, diary, economic and political allegory—and in judging the character of Crusoe, a topic that has elicited much scholarly debate. The essays in this volume offer classroom tested strategies that address these and many other concerns.
Part 1, “Materials,” describes the novel’s publishing history, its critical reputation, its fictional predecessors, and its stature as an international text. It also surveys modern editions, scholarly biographies, and relevant Web sites and provides a brief biography of Defoe. Essays in part 2, “Approaches,” focus on genres such as travel writing and conduct books; consider how ideas about individualism, education, science, masculinity, and race helped shape Defoe’s trilogy; trace the themes of the colonial experience in castaway narratives and Robinsonades; and show how the Crusoe story unfolds in later periods, in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe, Derek Walcott’s poetry, children’s literature, and film.
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