This course offers a generous sampling of British literature from the turn of the seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth, covering poetry, drama and fiction from these tumultuous two centuries of British history.  During this era, Britain moves from relatively marginal status in Europe to a pivotal position on the European stage, from religious division that breeds civil war to an age of reason that leads to scientific and industrial innovation, the first glimmers of the modern era.  It is also the age of the rise of the newspaper and the novel as newly dominant literary forms in British culture, the newfound prominence of women in the literary marketplace, and the popular reading and theater-going publics as major forces in English literary life.  The story of these two centuries of literary history is filled with eccentricity, bawdiness, religious devotion, political intrigue, and, above all, exceptional literary craft and poetic beauty.  In Spring 2020 this course satisfies a pre-1800 literature requirment for English majors.