The course aims to study Restoration literature on the basis of the rich and manifold problematic of the time on notions of government, the law, the family and sexual ethics. It focuses on the ways in which the major political tenets of Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan and of John Locke in Two Treatises of Government are registered in the highly politicized literature of the Restoration. The selection of a number of texts that represent different genres (poetry, drama, novel) demonstrates the extent to which Restoration literature, contrary to traditional critical views, offered the terrain for a crucial debate on the political, patriarchal and gender authority, which questioned, while at the same time affirming, the dominant ideology at the specific historical moment.

Student evaluation will be based on the research papers students submitted during the course and a final exam.

Instructor: A. Velissariou