ENGLISH 313: AUGUSTAN WRITERS I
(English Literature, 1660-1700)
Fall 1999

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Study Questions

First Paper

Due:         In class, Monday, October 18
Length:    5 pages, typed and double-spaced

    In Etherege's The Man of Mode, Dorimat seems to resemble Hobbes's description of man in the state of nature "where every man is enemy to every man."  The state of nature fosters a sort of moral relativism:

To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be unjust.     The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place.  Where there is no        common power, there is no law: where no law, no injustice.  Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues (31).

Is Dorimant's Hobbesian moral sensibility celebrated or corrected by the actions of the play?  Discuss this, using evidence from the text to support and develop your claims.

 

 

 

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