[Milton-L] seventeenth century texts

[Jacque Wernimont]

While I haven't taught a course limited to 17th century texts, I've used a
number of them to great effect in topical courses. I think Cavendish's A New
World called the Blazing World (1666, 1668) is well worth the time,
especially with carefully selected sections from her Observations on Natural
Philosophy and Philosophical Letters, which were published around the same
time. This text works very well with Fontenelle's Conversations on the
Plurality of Worlds (1686) and Cyrano de Bergerac's Voyages to the Sun and
Moon - the three of them are very interesting with respect to Utopian
literature, the romance genre, and natural philosophy in literature; they
are also an interesting transition from the metaphysical poets.

I won't list the various Restoration dramatists and poets, since they are
familiar. I'll only say that I think they are a richer resource than is
sometimes recognized.

Looking forward to hearing what others think.

Jacqueline Wernimont
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.richmond.edu/pipermail/milton-l/attachments/20080402/88a28081/attachment.html