Decadence and Seduction

Catalog description

The Eighteenth Century was not just a time of powdered wigs and bone-crunching gowns. It was a time of deception, seduction, and decadence writ large. By studying a variety of texts like mock epics, trenchant satires, feisty novels, caustic engravings, flippant opera, and bawdy comedies, we will explore this culture of privilege and irreverence built in part on a growing consumer culture that was underwritten by an expanding empire as well as class and gender disparities. Raunchiness was both celebrated and satirized in a culture where people across the classes were as consumable as the newly fashionable chocolate sold in the classy hubs of decadence and debauchery - the infamous chocolate houses –and the result was as bitter, if you couldn’t afford the sugar. Satisfies the Historical Approaches requirement of the English major. Satisfies a requirement in the Global Literary Theory interdisciplinary minor. Satisfies the LTRQ Ways of Knowing requirement. Prerequisites & Notes First-year students require permission of the instructor.