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Events and classes > Read the Classics > 1600s & 1700s

Read the Classics: 1600s & 1700s

Join "the Great Conversation" of the literary imagination by participating in a reading and discussion series focused on three great works from the 1600s and 1700s. Each book will have a two-part discussion. Robert S. Knapp, from Reed College, will lead the discussions. 2009-2010 season.

Central Library

Third Sundays, 2–4 p.m.

The Discussions

Registration is required for each session; we ask for you to commit to two sessions for each book. Register online, in the library or call 503.988.5234.

A limited supply of these books will be available at the preceding book discussions. Pick up a "bring-em-back" copy of the book, that you do not have to check out, at Woodstock Library after registering. Return the book at the discussion.

Meet your professor

Robert S. Knapp, is the Reginald F. Arragon Professor of English and Humanities at Reed College, where he has taught for 34 years. His doctorate is from Cornell University. He is a specialist in Shakespeare and early modern literature. In addition to his book Shakespeare: The Theater and the Book, Princeton 1989, he has published numerous articles and is working on another book tentatively entitled Circe's Rod: Shakespeare and the Disciplines of Culture.

The Books

In Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, many aspects of human existence changed in radical ways. Consider, among other things, the continuing effects of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, imperialist expansion especially but not exclusively in the Americas, rapid economic development (especially in England) and such political transformations as the English Civil War. Not surprisingly, literary genres underwent equally radical transformations: old ways of writing allegory were superseded, chivalric romance went into decline, poets ceased to be able to write convincing epics, and the genre that we recognize as the "novel" became consolidated. In the process, human life came to be represented in new ways, with far-reaching implications for how we conceive of ourselves in relation to others, to the political order, and to sources of transcendent value.

This literary conversation will focus on three works that played central roles in effecting this transformation: Cervantes's Don Quixote, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Fielding's Tom Jones. Since each of these works is long and deserving of close examination, we'll be spending two discussion periods on each one.

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Don Quixote Cervantes published The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha in two parts, the first in 1605. With its picaresque adventure and serio-comic mockery of chivalric romance Don Quixote has become an enduring emblem of the powers of idealism and the impossibility of effecting justice in the real world. It has been more widely translated and is more extensively influential than any book other than the Bible. We will be reading Edith Grossman's fine translation.

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Paradise Lost Paradise Lost was originally published in 10 books in 1667. This epic poem in blank verse was reissued in 1674 in 12 books, thus reinforcing its ambition to imitate and surpass all previous epic writing (including, of course, Virgil's Aeneid, which also had 12 books). Milton had originally intended to write a kind of national epic with King Arthur as chivalric hero, but following the Restoration of Charles II and the defeat of Milton's political ambitions (he had served as Latin Secretary to Oliver Cromwell), the poet took on the much grander task of attempting to understand the "Fall," and of justifying "the ways of God to man." Filled with memorable characters (one of whom, Satan, has often been thought the real hero of the poem), vivid descriptions, subtle theological argument, and some of the grandest verse in the English language, Paradise Lost repays all the attention that one can give it.

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

Tom Jones Tom Jones is a vivid panorama of 18th-century life, spiced with danger and intrigue, bawdy exuberance and good-natured authorial interjections. Published in 1749, The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, is a kind of hybrid of comic romance, epic (and mock-epic) scope, self-proclaimed "history," and continuing direction for the reader. With obvious and loving debts to Don Quixote, and persistent if indirect reference to Paradise Lost, Tom Jones has a plot that some have described as nearly perfect, a comic energy that most readers find irresistible, and yet it also provokes serious moral reflection about justice in the world and in our representations of that world.

More classics of the 1600's & 1700's - Suggested Readings



Further reading about the literature of the 1600's & 1700's

Nabokov, Vladimir
Lectures on Don Quixote
(1983)
”A fastidiously shaped series of lectures based on a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the Spanish classic. Rejecting the common interpretation of Don Quixote as a warm satire, Nabokov perceives the work as a catalog of cruelty through which the gaunt knight passes.”
France, Miranda
Don Quixote's Delusions: Travels in Castilian Spain
(2001)
”The author describes her experiences as a student in Madrid in 1987, and new realizations about Spain during a return visit in 1998. She connects her personal journey and discoveries to an examination of Cervantes' novel, . This unusual combination of literary analysis and autobiography may appeal to scholars, travelers and general readers alike.”
Glover, Douglas
The Enamoured Knight
(2005)
”This book is filled with passion and love for the art of writing and is a celebration of reading. Through the prism of the great Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky, Douglas Glover provides a scrupulous reading of Cervantes's Don Quixote, opening this 400-year-old Spanish masterpiece to a new generation of readers, showing how Cervantes made his novel, and, finally, revealing how we as readers participate in his magic creation.”
González Echevarría, Roberto
Cervantes' Don Quixote: A Casebook
(2005)
This casebook gathers a collection of ambitious essays about both parts of the novel and also provides a general introduction and a bibliography. The essays range from Ramon Menendez Pidal's seminal study of how Cervantes dealt with chivalric literature to Erich Auerbachs polemical study of Don Quixote as essentially a comic book by studying its mixture of styles, and include Leo Spitzer's masterful probe into the essential ambiguity of the novel through minute linguistic analysis of Cervantes prose. All these essays ultimately seek to discover that which is peculiarly Cervantean in Don Quixote and why it is considered to be the first modern novel.
Childers, William
Transnational Cervantes
(2006)
“The author first repositions Cervantes' fiction in terms of the social and political changes taking place in early modern Spain, and establishes comparisons with Latin American cultural practice. Then he offers a reading of the posthumous Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda as a transnational romance. Finally, he turns to the present day by connecting Cervantes' text to contemporary issues, such as immigration, minority cultures, and the role of European national languages and literatures in a postnational and multicultural U.S.” (booknews.com)
Auerbach, Erich
Mimesis: the Representation of Reality in Western literature
(1953)
"A half-century after its translation into English, Erich Auerbach's Mimesis still stands as a monumental achievement in literary criticism. A brilliant display of erudition, wit, and wisdom, his exploration of how great European writers from Homer to Virginia Woolf depicted reality has taught generations how to read Western literature."

Made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities Fund of The Library Foundation.


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