Sex, Seduction and Sedition in Restoration Literature (PG)

This course aims to explore the presentations of seduction and sedition in the literature of the Restoration period in order to consider the ways in which ideas of sexuality were deployed for political ends, both domestic and national. Beginning with a series of readings of the Restoration state as a family structure, the course will go on to examine the ways that tensions within that idea were exposed by the literature of the period. Images of seduction in the literature of the period present not only a range of types of sexual relationship but also address political tensions and debates directly, especially with regard to the Exclusion Crisis, and also engage with philosophical and theological arguments about the nature of truth, politics, the state, and good and evil. Students will be asked to read some of the most influential literary writers of the period (including Dryden, Behn, Rochester, Milton and Vanbrugh) in the context of political theory, philosophy and conduct writing by such key thinkers as Hobbes, Filmer, Allestree, Locke and Astell, and to discuss topics such as libertinism, conscience, national identity, marriage, sexuality, debauchery and lust. Credit Level: 11 Year taken: Postgraduate