Contents

• Introduction and Chronology
• Historical overview
• Literary Overview
• Sample Reading : Pope's Essay on Man
• Reference

Chapter 3 also includes detailed readings of the following literary texts:

• Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, Or the Royal Slave
• Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
• Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
• Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady

Suggested essay questions

• Explore some of the consequences of calling the period from 1660 until 1685 "The Restoration." Was it accurate for the monarchy? Is it accurate for the time period?
• Are there tensions between the governmental development of political history and the demographic and behavioural developments of social history? Do they march together? Do works such as Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), Haywood's Female Spectator (1744-1746), Smollett's Roderick Random (1748), or Fielding's Tom Jones (1749) reinforce or undermine possible relationships between the governmental focus of political history and the individual focus of social history of this time period?
• Dryden and Pope are among the most important poets of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century. In poems such as "Absalom and Achitophel" and "MacFlecknoe," Dryden writes two very topical, contextual poems. In poems such as An Essay on Criticism and An Essay on Man, Pope writes two very general, 'conceptual' poems. What are the relative risks and rewards of each approach? What is lost or gained in writing poems such as Pope's general works; what is lost or gained in writing poems such as Dryden's topical works? Do you have a preference for one of the two types? If so, how would you defend your preference against those who prefer the other type?
• Is the Enlightenment a contextual term, tied to a few participants in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, or is it still relevant today? In other words, is it a historical period or a continuing conceptual possibility? What about Defoe, Pope, and Swift? Are they Enlightenment authors? If so, how? If not, why not? Address anticipated objections.
• The texts chosen here are often taken today as representing early modern science (Sprat's History of the Royal Society), late Renaissance or early modern or Baroque epic poetry (Milton's Paradise Lost), political philosophy (Locke's Second Treatise), literary or cultural criticism (Addison's Spectator no. 69), and travel narratives (Cook's Voyage Toward the South Pole). Can we conclude anything about the Restoration and Eighteenth Century from the fact that they could all be considered literature? Can we conclude anything about the idea of literature that they could all be considered literature?