Memorably titled, this course will read writers that for decades were grouped under such rubrics as "The Age of Sensibility" (as if sentimentality then ended), "The Age of Johnson" (as if the age could be represented by one man), and "Preromanticism" (as if writers could anticipate a movement not yet begun). In jettisoning such terms in the last decades, one of the challenges facing cultural historians of these decades has been how to reconfigure its texts in ways that acknowledge the incredibly diverse and experimental nature of its writing. In addition to reading primary texts, therefore, we'll also discuss the issues of periodization, authorship, and canon formation raised by them. Course participants should expect to read essays by Marilyn Butler, Jeffrey Cox, Michel Foucault, Fredric Jameson, Claudia Johnson, Marjorie Levinson, Alan Liu, Marlon Ross, and Martha Woodmansee during the semester.

Course readings will be taken from the following authors and texts. Prospective students are urged to suggest further texts that would enhance the course:

Fiction: Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768); Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771); Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (trans. 1773); Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker (1773); Fanny Burney, Evelina (1778); Sophia Lee, The Recess (1785); Charlotte Smith, Desmond (1792) or The Old Manor House (1793); William Godwin, Caleb Williams (1794); Robert Bage, Hermsprong; Or, Man as He Is Not (1796); Matthew Lewis, The Monk (1796); Ann Radcliffe, The Italian (1797); Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent (1800).

Drama: Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal (1777); Hannah Cowley, A Bold Stroke for a Husband (1783); Elizabeth Inchbald, Such Things Are (1788) and Every Man Has His Fault (1793); Friedrich Schiller, The Robbers (trans. 1792); Matthew Lewis, The Castle Spectre (1798); George Colman the Younger, Bluebeard (1798); and Joanna Baillie, Count Basil (1798), The Trial (1798), and De Monfort (1798).

Poetry: Selected poems by Anna Barbauld, Hannah More, Anna Seward, Charlotte Smith, Robert Burns, William Cowper, Helen Maria Williams, Robert Merry, Hannah Cowley, William Lisle Bowles, Erasmus Darwin, Mary Robinson, Samuel Coleridge, Robert Southey, and William Wordsworth.

Non-Fiction Prose: Works by James Boswell, Anna Barbauld, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Olaudah Equiano, Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, and Maria Edgeworth.

There will be a number of responses, an annotated bibliography, and a final essay.