- Department: English and Related Literature
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: H
- Academic year of delivery: 2022-23
This module explores a period in which writers, across a vibrant range of genres, engaged with fashion, material culture, and commodity culture. It examines the literary, historical and cultural contexts of dress and style in the eighteenth century, a period of significant growth for the fashion and textiles industries in Britain. Eighteenth-century dress, and its depiction in print culture, held important connections to the global eighteenth century.
Then as now, fashion was a vital aspect of culture and central to perceptions of national identity, race, gender and social mobility. Eighteenth-century fashions depended on Britain’s expanding trade with nations and regions around the world and also on the exploitation of enslaved labourers, when it came to the production, for example, of cotton textiles and indigo dyes. British writers wrote, in detail, about luxurious Indian textiles and the fashions of the Ottoman Empire, thinking through the complex connections between appearance and culture.
Fashion was implicated in widespread literary debates about what constituted good and bad taste. Its critics viewed it as a dangerous tool for concealing one’s social station or gender identity; a threat to literary standards and ideals; a potential corruption of the English language and the nation itself. At the same time fashion proved an attractive vehicle through which to contemplate changing gender ideals, social mobility and global aesthetics in eighteenth-century Britain. Throughout we will consider why fashion drew so many varied attacks and how this affirmed its cultural and literary capital.
Eighteenth-century fashion was undeniably modern: seasonal trends marked the passage of time and fashion was deeply embedded in the era’s celebrity culture. We will examine crosscurrents between print culture and fashion in order to trace how and why fashion was theorised, attacked, and admired by a broad range of writers. We’ll consider how poets engaged the dressing room, how novelists described fashionable society, and how essayists debated the meanings of luxury goods. We’ll also look at visual culture and material objects to help contextualise our literary texts. A research workshop in the Special Collections library will familiarise you with handling and analysing eighteenth-century texts, prints, and fashion plates. No prior knowledge of fashion or material culture is expected, and this module should appeal to English students interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the past, as well as students in joint degree programs with History of Art and History.
Occurrence | Teaching period |
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A | Autumn Term 2022-23 |
The module aims to develop confidence and expertise in drawing analytical connections between literary texts and a broad range of visual and material forms.
On successful completion of the module, you should be able to:
Demonstrate an advanced understanding of and engagement with fashion and material culture in eighteenth-century literature, and its afterlives today.
Demonstrate an advanced understanding of and engagement with interdisciplinary approaches to the study of literature.
Evaluate key debates within the relevant critical fields dealing with eighteenth-century literature’s engagement with gender, commodity culture and global trade.
Produce independent arguments and ideas which demonstrate an advanced proficiency in critical thinking, research, and writing skills.
Task | % of module mark |
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Essay/coursework | 100 |
None
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
Addison and Steele, The Tatler and Spectator Papers
Bernard Mandeville, The fable of the bees
John Gay, The fan
Jonathan Swift and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, dressing room poems
Daniel Defoe, Roxana
Frances Burney, Evelina
Anonymous, The Woman of Colour
Anonymous, It-Narratives
Print satires by James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson