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Academic Year 2004/2005


Food and Drugs in the British Enlightenment
ENGL 335 FA

This course looks at writings produced in the context of culinary revolutions in 18th-century England: the gradual replacement of coffee by tea; increasing dependence on non-staple foods and drugs (coffee, tea, gin, rum, chocolate, sugar, spices, tobacco) cultivated primarily in America and Asia; internal changes in the English diet as a result of new techniques for farming, animal husbandry, manufacture, and waste management. We'll look at writings that register these changes, writings that imagine foods that don't yet exist, novels that use food as a narrative device, and poetry and philosophy conceived as a kind of food. Readings will be selected from a variety of texts by Pepys, Congreve, Swift, Pope, Rowlandson, Byrd, Franklin, Richardson, Sterne, Smollett, Voltaire, Lichtenberg, Boswell, Hume, Burney.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS

This course meets the English Department's pre-1800 requirement.

COURSE FORMAT: Seminar

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL    Grading Mode: Graded   

Prerequisites: ENGL201 Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-21-2005


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