Literary Criticism and Aesthetics

This is mainly a note to myself, but if I were to write up a syllabus for a course on 18C aesthetics and literary criticism, I would include (so far):

• Aristotle's Poetics
• Longinus On the Sublime
• D'Avenant's Preface to Gondibert and Hobbes's response
• Howard's Preface to Four New Plays
• Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy and Heads of an Answer to Rymer
  
• Buckingham's The Rehearsal
• Rymer's Tragedies of the Last Age Consider'd
• Temple's Essay on the Gardens of Epicurus or Ancient and Modern Learning
• Pope
• Dennis' The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry and his critique of Pope's Rape of the Lock
• Addison and Steele's The Spectator (selections)
• Hume's Essays On Tragedy and The Standard of Taste
• Fielding's critique of Richardson and character in theatre
• Richardson's last chapter of Clarissa
  
• Akenside's Pleasure of the Imagination
• Johnson
• Burke's Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful
• Barbauld

Coolio. Back to reading...