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Latest Module Specifications

Current Academic Year 2025 - 2026

Module Title Literature of the 17th & 18th Centuries
Module Code LIT1050 (ITS: LIT3)
Faculty Humanities & Social Sciences School English
NFQ level 8 Credit Rating 15
Description

The module opens in the mid-seventeenth century with a unit called ‘An Incendiary Age.’ The warfare that ravages the three kingdoms of England, Ireland and Scotland finds expression as various as celebrations of Cromwell, attacks on censorship, and John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost. The period in which John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress, an allegory of Christian life, also witnessed the sexual revelry and scepticism of Restoration poetry and drama. The eighteenth century was a golden age of prose, including Swift’s satirical suggestion that the Irish could sustain themselves by eating the babies of impoverished families, the refined feeling of ‘the rise of the novel,’ and the birth of Gothic fiction.

Learning Outcomes

1. 1DCDFAD2-DD74-0001-50D9-1E801B3017F2
2. Discuss the importance of the effect of political events on literary texts of the Restoration and eighteenth century
5. 1
6. 1DCDFAD2-E487-0001-4747-1E401DCB1165
7. Analyse non-fictional prose literary works
10. 2
11. 1DCDFAD2-E9D7-0001-4595-7C5116031D02
12. Explain the role of satire in the Restoration and eighteenth century
15. 3
16. 1DCDFAD2-EF7C-0001-786D-46208A003A00
17. Interpret early English novels
20. 4
21. 1DCDFAD2-F548-0001-30E8-7C9010005300
22. Explain the importance of representations of rural life in Restoration and eighteenth-century England
25. 5
26. 1DF15521-AC28-0001-9EC9-1DB0DDE0193D
27. Collaborate with other students to successfully complete academic and practical tasks.
30. 6


WorkloadFull time hours per semester
TypeHoursDescription
Tutorial15No Description
Online activity60No Description
Independent Study300No Description
Total Workload: 375
Section Breakdown
CRN11685Part of TermSemester 1 & 2
Coursework100%Examination Weight0%
Grade Scale40PASSPass Both ElementsN
Resit CategoryRC1Best MarkN
Module Co-ordinatorJack QuinModule TeacherLeeann Lane, Shirley Anne O'Brien
Assessment Breakdown
TypeDescription% of totalAssessment Date
Group project n/a30%n/a
Essayn/a30%n/a
Essayn/a40%n/a
Reassessment Requirement Type
Resit arrangements are explained by the following categories;
RC1: A resit is available for both* components of the module.
RC2: No resit is available for a 100% coursework module.
RC3: No resit is available for the coursework component where there is a coursework and summative examination element.

* ‘Both’ is used in the context of the module having a coursework/summative examination split; where the module is 100% coursework, there will also be a resit of the assessment

Pre-requisite l,
Co-requisite None
Compatibles None
Incompatibles None

All module information is indicative and subject to change. For further information,students are advised to refer to the University's Marks and Standards and Programme Specific Regulations at: http://www.dcu.ie/registry/examinations/index.shtml

Indicative Content and Learning Activities

Unit 1: Introduction: An Incendiary Age

Unit 2: Loss and Renewal: Pastoral Poems by John Milton

Unit 3: Civil War to Interregnum: Engagement in the Public Sphere and the 'Country House' Poem

Unit 4: Seventeenth-Century Political Prose: John Milton's Areopagitica

Unit 5: Loss and Renewal in John Milton's Paradise Lost

Unit 6: John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress: An Allegory of the Christian Life

Unit 7: Restoration to Revolution (1): Debauch and Disability

Unit 8: Restoration to Revolution (2) Restored Wit: The Poetry of John Dryden

Unit 9: Restoration beyond Revolution: William Congreve's The Way of the World

Unit 10: Alexander Pope: The Rape of the Lock

Unit 11: Creativity and Gender: Pope, Finch, Barber

Unit 12: Travel Writing and the Letter in the Eighteenth Century: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Unit 13: Daniel Defoe: A Journal of the Plague Year (1722)

Unit 14: Jonathan Swift and Ireland

Unit 15: 'Rise of the Novel' (1): Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740)

Unit 16: Rise of the Novel (2): Henry Fielding and the 'Pamela Controversy'

Unit 17: 'The Rise of the Novel'? Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy

Unit 18: Sentimental Fiction: Henry Mackenzie's Man of Feeling

Unit 19: Journey Narratives: Tobias Smollet's Expedition of Humphry Clinker

Unit 20: The Country and the City: Goldsmith and Crabbe

Unit 21: Gothic Fiction: Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto and Beyond

Unit 22: Review

Indicative Reading List

Books:
  • 0: N.B: The majority of the poems from the required reading lists are available on Literature Online, although there are textual variants with the versions used here., 1672409
  • 0: This booklist is too long to present here in full. Please see Loop for more readings/online resources., 1672410
  • 1984: The Pilgrim's Progress, ed. by N. H. Keeble, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1672411
  • 2003: A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), ed. by Cynthia Wall, Penguin Classics, 1672412
  • 1999: Joseph Andrews and Shamela, ed. by Judith Hawley, London: Penguin, 1672413
  • 2018: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 10th, Vol 1, New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1672414
  • 2009: The Man of Feeling, Vickers, B., Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford, with notes and introduction by Stephen Bending and Stephen Bygrave., 1672415
  • 1763: Letters of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, written during her travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, ebook in Google Books, 1672416
  • 2008: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded 1740, ed. by Keymer, T. and Wakely, A., Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford, 1672417
  • 0: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Any academic edition, 1672418
  • 2014: The Castle of Otranto, ed. by Nick Groom, Oxford University Press,


Articles:
None
Other Resources

None

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