LIT089 CM - The English Enlightenment: Dryden, Pope, and Johnson

The course will focus on poets whose poems display many of the virtues of memorable prose-clarity, vigor, sense, civility. These poets were engaged by the events of their time and wrote for literate readers who prized the sense of what they read-a general audience. The course will represent these poets’ literary achievements, with special attention given to Pope’s Essay on Man and Johnson’s “The Vanity of Human Wishes.” All three poets left their mark, too, on the history of literary criticism. We will discuss Dryden’s essays and prefaces, Pope’s Essay on Criticism, and Johnson’s Lives of the Poets.

Offered: Occasionally

Credit: 1

Course Number: LIT 089 CM