English Literature / Unit 20 ENL 1905 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Restoration and Eighteenth Century in Review
The idea
Review ten percent of the exam in two parts. The Restoration: the reopened stage with its first actresses, the comedy of manners from Wycherley to Congreve, Dryden's heroic couplets in "Mac Flecknoe" and Absalom and Achitophel, Rochester, Behn's Oroonoko and The Rover, Bunyan's allegory and Pepys's diary. The eighteenth century: Pope's couplets in The Rape of the Lock and the essays, Swift's Gulliver and "A Modest Proposal," Addison and Steele's periodical essay, the rise of the novel from Defoe to Sterne, Johnson and Boswell, Gray's Elegy and the turn to sensibility and the Gothic. For any passage, listen for the closed couplet and ask what the wit or satire exposes.
In practice
Restoration wit; Augustan satire; the novel.
Where people slip
Never attribute a satirical speaker's proposal to the author. The irony is the point.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Unlocks
- Nothing yet depends on this.
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