British Lit: 17th Century

This course will look at seventeenth-century literature and culture through the idea of revenge, which became a dominant form in an age of turmoil, injury, and change. We will begin with the early revenge plays of Shakespeare, Tourneur, Marston, Ford, and Webster, proceed through the cosmic revenge of Satan in Paradise Lost , and end with the ironic revenge exacted on moral goodness by the Restoration poets, playwrights, and philosophers.