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After a brief survey of key satirical traditions since classical antiquity, we will engage with the work of Jonathan Swift and Laurence Sterne. The discussion of Swift's work will include some of the satirical poems as well as Gulliver's Travels and selections from Tale of a Tub and Battle of the Books. In the second half of the seminar, we will engage with Sterne's great satirical novel Tristram Shandy. We will discuss both Swift's and Sterne's writing as critical engagements with the Enlightenment, also asking whether they can illuminate present-day criticisms of Enlightenment thought. Students are asked to buy or borrow the excellent (and inexpensive!) The Essential Writings of Jonathan Swift: A Norton Critical Edition, ed. by Claude Rawson and Ian Higgins (Norton, 2009) and the Penguin Classics edition of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, ed. by Joan New and Melvyn New (Penguin, 2003). Please make sure you get these editions. |
