Princeton University - Department of English

Professor: Jonathan Lamb

Preceptor: Laura Sayre

ENG 321

Travel in Eighteenth-Century Fiction and Prose Narrative

Syllabus

• The course will deal with a variety of novels and journals describing the travels of men and women from some familiar point in Britain to a foreign or exotic location. Although some of the journeys may simply pursue the well-worn tracks of the Grand Tour through France and Italy, others will end up in stranger places, such as the Western Isles of Scotland, the Caribbean, Patagonia, and the unknown islands of the South Seas. As well as taking a broad interest in the novelties of these accounts, the course will be paying close attention to the encounter between the British traveller and the topographies, people and customs with which s/he comes into contact. We will be asking what sort of changes this causes to take place, both in the visitor and the visited, and whether these changes have an impact on the beliefs and principles which constitute the standards of metropolitan civility, as opposed to the primitivism and savagery, so-called, of other cultures. Among these metropolitan beliefs is included, of course, the value of travel narrative, both as an entertainment and a means of instruction; and we shall want to know whether the narrative itself survives the test of being transported.

  Course requirements include one short paper during the term (4-5 pages), one final essay (10 pages), and a comprehensive final exam. Short position papers may be assigned in precepts.

  Lectures and Primary Reading	Ancillary Reading
  Week 1 Introduction:
  Week 2 Defoe, Robinson Crusoe	Defoe, New Voyage Round the World
  Week 3 Behn, Oroonoko	Wafer, Description of the Isthmus of Darien Hawkesworth, Oroonoko
  Week 4 Swift, Gulliver's Travels	Coyer, Patagonian Giants
  Week 5 Defoe, Roxana Hawkesworth and Edgeworth, Oriental Tales	Wortley Montagu, Letters from Turkey
  Week 6 Johnson, Rasselas Beckford, Vathek	Montesquieu, Persian Letters
  Break
  Week 7 Smollett, Roderick Random	The Wreck of the Wager
  Week 8 Smollett, Humphry Clinker	The Deathsong
  Week 9 Mackenzie, Julia de Roubigne Smollett and Johnson, Travels
  Week 10 Sterne, A Sentimental Journey	Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments
  Week 11 Olaudah Equiano, Life of Gustavus Vassa	Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
  Week 12 Summary

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