The Georgian era, named after the reigns of Georges I–IV (1714–1830), was a period of major economic, social, and cultural upheavals, during which Britain became a modern, global superpower, thereby setting the stage for the world we live in.

Together we shall study a wide range of texts and images to discuss issues at the core of the political, economic, and cultural revolutions of the 18th century: What does it mean to be human? Is it the capacity to reason? To feel? To be free? To trade and own things? To have access to information? To create or experience beauty? Who does equality mean? What do parents and children, husbands and wives owe themselves and each other? What rights do women, men without title or property, colonized people, and the enslaved have? Why? Are there universal human rights? How much power should the State have? What are the human, social, and environmental consequences of progress, globalization, and the rise of capitalism and industrialization?

To better understand and debate these issues, we shall read comedies, poems, essays, and novels by such authors as Susanna Centlivre, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Eliza Haywood, Samuel Richardson, William Blake, and Mary Shelley, including "Frankenstein." We shall also make extensive use of the rich collection of satirical prints by artist William Hogarth held at the CU Art Museum. Finally, we shall keep an eye out for the ways in which eighteenth-century works and concerns can help us make sense of today’s events.

Provides an interdisciplinary study of England in one of its most vibrant cultural and historical periods. Topics include politics, religion, family life, and the ways contemporary authors understood their world.

Requisites: Restricted to students with 27-180 credits (Sophomores, Juniors or Seniors) only.
Additional Information:Arts Sci Core Curr: Historical Context
Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: British Literature after 1660

Taught by Catherine Labio.

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Augmester

The historical period known as Georgian England runs from 1714-1830. That period encompassed a time of extraordinary change:  Great Britain has by 1800 arguably become the most powerful nation in the world; it had gained an empire in the new world that it then lost with the American Revolution; cities (especially London) grew explosively; the IGeorgian England is a dynamic moment in British history.  It covers the literature, life, and history during the reign of four King Georges (1714-1830).  It was a time of the revival of Greek classicism’s serenity and in contrast a time of explosive revolutions. It begins with conservative ideas and values and ends with radical ones which challenge conventional gender constructions, social hierarchies, slavery, women’s rights, and tyranny. Nature and Poetry reign supreme!

Possible texts include novels by Austen and Mary Shelley and poetry by Finch, Pope, Swift, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley.

Taught by John Stevenson ONLINE during August 3 - August 20, 2020.

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Provides an interdisciplinary study of England in one of its most vibrant cultural and historical periods. Topics include politics, religion, family life, and the ways contemporary authors understood their world.

Requisites: Restricted to students with 27-180 credits (Sophomores, Juniors or Seniors) only.
Additional Information:Arts Sci Core Curr: Historical Context
Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: British Literature after 1660

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The period of history known as Georgian England runs from 1714-1837, a period that encompasses a period of extraordinary change.  Great Britain became by 1800 the most powerful nation in the world and during this period it gained and lost an empire; its cities, especially London, grew explosively, the industrial revolution begins, the novel as a literary genre is born, women and the working classes begin to assert their rights, and much else besides.  Literature and the arts—in poetry, in fiction, in painting, in music, and drama and architecture—are at a pinnacle.  

Using thematic modules such as Politics, Crime and Punishment, Love and Marriage, and Romanticism, we will explore the period’s fascinating history and literary greatness.  Readings will include such writers such as Swift, Austen, Wordsworth, Johnson, Wollstonecraft, and Keats, as well some primary source material. We will also examine the rich visual legacy of the time.

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Georgian England runs roughly from 1714-1837, a period that encompasses a period of extraordinary change: Great Britain, arguably the most powerful nation in the world by 1800, gains and loses and then gains another empire, cities (especially London) grow explosively, modern industry begins, the novel as a literary genre is born, women and the working classes begin to assert their rights, and much else. Literature and the arts—in poetry, in fiction, in painting, in music, in drama, in architecture—are at a pinnacle. The course will focus on modules that explore some of the most important political, historical, and artistic facets of the period: criminal justice and the legal system, the power of satire, the birth of women’s rights, the country vs the city, the emergence of the professional writer, the class system, and the exploration of a new kind of personal poetry with the Romantic movement. We will study Swift, Pope, Wollstonecraft, Hogarth, Johnson, Wordsworth, Austen, as well as additional reading in primary sources on crime and justice.

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In 1706 and 1707 the parliaments of England and Scotland ratified Acts of Union that gave birth to the Kingdom of Great Britain. Partly as a result, the Georgian era, named after the reigns of Georges I–IV (1714–1830), was a period of staggering political, economic, social, intellectual, and artistic transformations, during which Britain became a modern nation and an industrial and imperial superpower.

In this course we shall study some of the literary and visual works that shaped and responded to the tumultuous history of the eighteenth century. In particular, we shall pay attention to the ways in which writers and artists used a wide range of forms, from satirical prints to philosophical essays, political poems, and sentimental novels to redefine what it means to be human: Is it our capacity to reason and feel? To trade and own things? To be free?

In particular, we shall study how they made sense of a wide range of sometimes contradictory phenomena, including:

• the rise of the middle class in a highly stratified society;
• changes in gender roles and the institution of marriage;
• industrialization, urbanization and the simultaneous idealization of country life;
• the defense of liberty and the existence of slavery;
• the brilliant use of often raucous and vulgar textual and visual satires and the emphasis on politeness and Enlightenment values;
• capitalism, colonialism, and globalization;
• British views on the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, and the Napoleonic Wars.

We shall also ask how “Britishness” came to be defined in the eighteenth century, especially in relation to English, Irish, Scottish, European identities, a phenomenon that will help us better understand some of the issues surrounding Brexit, that is, the decision to leave the European Union.

We shall study works by such authors as Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Olaudah Equiano, William Blake, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Jane Austen alongside a wide range of works of art, from paintings by Thomas Gainsborough, Joseph Wright of Derby,  and J.M.W. Turner to pottery by Josiah Wedgwood.  In particular, we shall take advantage of the CU Art Museum’s extensive collection of prints by William Hogarth to explore how this London artist, writer, businessman, and philanthropist represented the world around him in wonderfully detailed satirical and other prints, some of which are often seen as precursors to modern comics.

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