The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries saw the explosive growth of London and other English cities and the unprecedented outpouring of popular literature directed specifically at city-dwellers. This course will examine how urban growth changed literary representations of femininity and masculinity and transformed the concept of personal identity. While some writers celebrated the city as a vibrant site of general debauchery (gambling, prostitution, drinking, masquerades), others suggested that literature could provide a moral antidote to the corruption that urban living engendered. We’ll explore the relationships between the city and the country, and between men and women, by surveying a variety of late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century drama, poetry, and fiction including Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, and Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock. In addition to active class participation, course requirements will include several reading responses, a research project, and an essay.