FREEDOM AND CONSTRAINT IN THE LITERATURE

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, English writers debated the nature of freedom on a number of fronts:  in politics, proponents of the individual rights of the subject challenged monarchical authority; in religion, antinomian Protestants challenged the limits of liturgy and church hierarchy; in the household, advocates of “companionate marriage” challenged the traditional subordination of women, and libertine writers challenged restrictive sexual mores (all of these challenges, needless to say, were met with counter-challenges).  This seminar will read works of English poetry and prose in dialogue with multiple, intersecting, and occasionally conflicting contemporary theories of liberty and its limits.  A central aim of this course will be to trace this engagement formally, generically, and structurally – that is, we will consider freedom and unfreedom as principles of aesthetics and poetics, as well as politics and ethics.