ENGL 6330 - [Eighteenth-Century Literature: Other-than-Human Forms: Materialism, Affect, Ecocriticism, Animal]

Fall or Spring. Next Offered: 2019-2020. 4 credits. Student option grading.

L. Brown.

This course juxtaposes some of the core strains of current post-humanist theory—new materialism or “thing theory,” the “affective turn,” ecocriticism or environmental humanities, and literary animal studies. Using eighteenth-century literature, culture, and intellectual discourse as a starting point and then sampling related materials in the Anglo-American tradition from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we will define these theoretical scenarios, and evaluate the broader impact of the other-than-human on literary theory and on formal critique. Texts include Newton, Opticks; Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Hume, Treatise of Human Nature; Burney, Evelina; Nabokov, Lolita; Cowper, The Task; Voltaire, Candide; Robinson, Forty Signs of Rain; Kendall, Keeper’s Travels; The Dog of Knowledge; The Biography of a Spaniel; Auster, Timbuktu.