The Restoration

This course will closely examine the culture that produced both the first official poet laureate of England, John Dryden, and the most notoriously libertine poet in English, the Earl of Rochester. Also appearing will be the first English woman to make a living from literature, Aphra Behn; the wittiest playwrights in English dramatic history (Wycherley, Etherege, Congreve); John Milton; some very early English novels; and some pretty good philosophers, including Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and maybe even Sir Isaac Newton. All that and the Great Fire of London, outbreaks of the plague, several wars, and major revolutions in politics and science.