Taste should provide an integrative concept for students' knowledge of the eighteenth century. By the end of the semester, they should be able to discuss the ways physical (sensory) taste was related to and distinguished from aesthetic Taste throughout the period. They should realize how the discourse of Taste shaped and reflected the massive political, social, and economic transformation of the eighteenth century. Finally, they should recognize that while standards of Taste wielded a great deal of social and political power, these standards were also disputed, not only by revolutions, but also from the start by those who were excluded from the institutions and disciplines of Taste.

Taste should also provide an integrative concept for students' personal and intellectual development. We hope that it will allow students to connect their work in our course with other courses they have taken, other books they have read, other experiences they have had. We also hope that students will realize that Taste is not formed according to universal standards of value but is, instead, culturally constructed. Thus, Taste intersects with other culturally-constructed components of identity such as race, class, gender, body image, and codes of conduct. With this realization, students will be equipped to question the ideal of a detached and disinterested perspective from which standards of Taste may be articulated. By focusing on how and why taste became Taste, students should learn to exercise Taste flexibly, becoming not merely passive observers but active participants in constructing their own, and acknowledging other, Tastes. In sum, students should learn a history, theory, and practice of Taste.

We have divided the course into three units—Cultivating Taste, Promoting Taste, and Revolutionizing Taste. Although divisions are never as neat as such breaks suggest, these units nevertheless sketch a historical narrative in which Taste figures as both an agent and reflection of cultural, political, and personal change.

Unit I

The first unit, Cultivating Taste, begins with two works which introduce the institutions and disciplines of Taste in France and England, beginning with France, which formalized cultural activity more thoroughly than any other Western civilization. The hero of Molière's Would Be Gentleman (1670) engages teachers to effect the transformation of his physical existence into Taste: his movements, he hopes, will become dance, his speech, prose, and his meals evidence of a refined sensibility. Etherege's Man of Mode (1676) presents Sir Fopling Flutter, whose propensities for French fashion, humorously depict a recurring problem for British Taste—the ever-present threat of French invasion. In these two plays we meet several important character types: the would-be gentlemen themselves, philistines and vulgarians, teachers and merchants, and aristocrats with "true" discernment. By viewing the failed aspirations of the two would-be gentlemen we discover the tensions inherent in Taste and its institutions. Courtly values and aristocratic privilege required an ideology of innate Taste; on the other hand, the very notion of institutionalizing Taste suggested that this courtly attribute, like land and titles, could be cultivated and even acquired.

The rest of this initial unit focuses on England in the years following the Glorious Revolution where the destabilization of aristocratic privileges is mirrored in conflicting and shifting standards of Taste. Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688), for example, casts the naturally discerning aristocrat as a "noble slave." While Behn expresses admiration for both the Stuarts and her fictive hero, she explicitly attempts to cultivate a taste for the exotic and the "curious" in a readership that extends beyond the court. Addison's and Shaftesbury's simultaneously conflicting and overlapping views on cultivating Taste further exemplify the complexities of this period, and lead into a consideration of tea and the material culture of Taste. Here, with the aid of selected portraits (representatives of the conversation piece genre) we show students that tea, one of the products of the new world, epitomizes how Taste was inscribed in sensory experience and the practices of everyday life, both private and public. Pope's "Windsor Forest" (1713), (1712, 1714, 1717), and "Epistle to Burlington" (1733) close this unit. Engaging issues of gender, colonialism, and class, Pope elegantly constructs himself as Tastemaker. While the promoters of Taste in the comedies of Molière and Etherege appear to fail and while Behn, as a woman writer, seems self-consciously hesitant toward forming Taste, Pope's enterprise seems confidently pedagogic. Hence Pope creates characters—critics, connoisseurs, perfect gentlemen, and flawed ladies—who convincingly display their good Taste.

Unit II

By mid-century, the word "Taste" was on almost every important tongue. The money to acquire Taste, thanks to the wealth produced by the growing colonial enterprise, was in more and more pockets. Thus, in our second unit, Promoting Taste, we show the increasing importance of institutions of Taste (as the excerpt from Foote's illustrates). Selections from Burke's on the Sublime and the Beautiful exemplify a number of efforts to refine Taste and defend it from the whims of fashion. In addition, we emphasize a conflict which intensified throughout the century between useless luxury and the decorously useful. It was a conflict that grew along with the wealth produced by the imperial enterprise. Henry Fielding, William Hogarth, and Jonas Hanway all defend against luxury. With these texts on tea and gin, we call students' attention to the ways in which tasting beverages continued to articulate notions of proper Taste. Then, Burney's (1778) tells the story of a would-be Lady who comes to a happily aristocratic end in spite of the temptations proffered by various vulgarians and promoters of luxury. This text also allows us to link the novel of manners to institutions of Taste—such as conduct books and public entertainments—which taught the rising middle classes how to express Good Taste. Finally, with Beckford's (1786), we present a text which narrates its main character's insatiable curiosity and undisciplined Taste. Since may be read as a parody of the search for Taste, we conclude the unit by stressing how thoroughly the subject of Taste pervaded the closing years of the century; parody, after all, assumes audience familiarity with its model discourse.

Unit III

The questions about Taste, gender, class, race, and power raised in the first two units return in full force in the final unit—Revolutionizing Taste—focusing on the cultural activity surrounding the American and French Revolutions, and the British reactions to the revolutions. From the Boston Tea Party to Marie Antoinette's cakes, this unit will stress that Taste is not only an aesthetic issue, but also a political and social issue—indeed, sometimes a matter of life and death. To begin, we provide texts that encourage students to interpret the Boston Tea Party as a politically inspired change in Taste. Our choice of texts also returns us to the would-be ladies and gentlemen, philistines, connoisseurs, and others whom we have encountered from the beginning. Tyler's (1787), in particular, asks what role these types should play in a republic founded on equality. Turning to Burke (1790) and Wollstonecraft (1790), we emphasize the centrality of issues of Taste in the British debate on the French Revolution. This unit concludes with two contemporary works, a film and novel. Scola's film, (1982), depicts noted radical Thomas Paine, revolutionary chronicler Restif de la Bretonne, the fading aristocrat Casanova, and other representative types of society traveling together through Revolutionary France, while the doomed royal family, the embodiment of Taste, flees to Varennes. Susan Sontag's (1992) ties together many of the themes of the course. This rich narrative touches upon collecting, aesthetic passions and values, curiosity, decorum, and standards of Taste. Its interlocking stories of born gentlemen (including Beckford) and a lady (the first Lady Hamilton), a would-be Lady (Emma Hamilton), a Lady turned revolutionary (Eleonora de Fonseca Pimental), an arbiter of Taste (William Hamilton), artists (Goethe, George Romney, and Angelica Kauffman), and vulgar nobility challenge students to apply all they have learned about eighteenth-century Taste.

In organizing our course, we selected cultural texts in which Taste seemed to be an issue rather than attempting an exhaustive survey of eighteenth-century Taste. Since "Taste" and its meanings are such a vital question in most realms of eighteenth-century culture, we realize there are many texts we have omitted. The course could include many artifacts and texts that we have not mentioned; indeed such flexibility was one of our goals as we developed the course. As our research interests change, we will change texts without drastically reorganizing the course. And, the basic frame of the course lends itself to our colleagues' textual preferences, even as they face similar pedagogical challenges. The course's flexibility also encourages collaboration among faculty members from several disciplines, since Taste, itself, is a "naturally" trans-disciplinary subject.

Since we want to emphasize the physical origins and expressions of Taste, as well as its continued influence in our students' lives, we will be working with an extremely broad definition of "text." As the syllabus illustrates, we have included a wide range of written and visual texts, and we often draw students' attention to the material culture of the eighteenth century as well, especially beverages (tea, coffee, and gin) and fashions (wigs and hoopskirts). This attention to material cultural epitomizes the links between sensory experience, everyday life, and Taste, and it encourages students to recognize a broad range of cultural phenomena as texts to be read and interpreted. To encourage students to acquire the skills and habits necessary for thoughtful reading and articulate interpretation, we will provide study questions throughout the semester. Students will respond to these questions in a journal; periodically, they will share their written responses with other students. The questions serve as a daily reading exercise and stimulus to discussion. We have provided supplementary readings of various kinds for each unit of the course; these provide contexts, model interpretative methods, and link the required texts to other texts. We hope they also convey to students that they are joining a long conversation about individual texts and about eighteenth-century Taste.

To encourage students to realize their acculturated, tacitly held knowledge of Taste as they learn about its history, we will ask them, first, to write a brief character sketch of a character type they recognize from their own experience. (We will suggest certain types to them in an introductory lecture to the course.) On the second day of class, students will share their sketches, and we will link their characters to 18th-century Characters. This assignment will provide students with a variety of Taste-based character types which they can chart in other texts throughout the course. The connoisseur, the critic, the collector, the philistine, the fashion-plate, and more are already known to students. The basic exercise of looking for similarities and differences in these types as they encounter them in their reading should help students to respond critically to their reading, rather than panicking (as they often do) at the unfamiliarity of eighteenth-century writing. Finally, accounting for how the characters change as the course (and century) progresses should encourage students to historicize, contextualize, and synthesize their expanding knowledge about Taste. As a mid-term project, we will ask students to work in groups in order to prepare brief, fifteen-minute presentations on "institutions" of Taste. The final project of the course, an extended critique, permits students to synthesize their knowledge of characters and institutions. The mid-term and final take-home examinations require students to express their knowledge of Taste through comparative analysis of the required texts.

Aphra Behn. Oroonoko. Ed. Joanna Lipking. Norton Critical Edition.

Alexander Pope. Poetry and Prose. Ed. Aubrey Williams. Riverside Edition.

Frances Burney. Evelina. Ed. Kristina Straub. Bedford Cultural Edition.

William Beckford. Vathek. Oxford World's Classics Edition.

Susan Sontag. The Volcano Lover: A Romance. Anchor Books.

Packet of Required Texts on Library Reserve:

Molière, The Would Be Gentleman; Etherege, The Man of Mode; Shaftesbury, Characteristics (Selections—Ed. Robertson); Addison, The Spectator (Selections—Ed. Bond); Ovington, An Essay upon the Nature and Qualities of Tea (Selections); Fielding, "Of Drunkenness" (Selections); Hanway, "An Essay on Tea" (Selections); Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry (Selections—Ed. Boulton); Paine, Tea Leaves (Selections); Common Sense (Selections—Meridian/NAL); Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Selections— Oxford World's Classics); Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Men (Selections—Ed. Todd).

Week 1

 Tuesday: Introduction to Course

 Slide Presentation I—Character & Caricature

Thursday: *Assignment I (Character Sketch) Due

 Discuss Molière, The Would Be Gentleman, Acts 1 & 2

 Tuesday: Molière, The Would Be Gentleman, Acts 3-5

 George Etherege, The Man of Mode or Sir Fopling Flutter, Acts 1 & 2

Thursday: George Etherege, The Man of Mode, Acts 3-5

 Readings: Bourdieu, 1-7; Braverman; Canfield, 1-16; Peters; Riggs; Staves, Secrets.

 Tuesday: Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, pp. 5-65

Thursday: Aphra Behn, Oroonoko

 Readings: Responses to Behn & Oroonoko in Norton Critical Edition, 189-264; Benedict.

 Tuesday: Selections from Shaftesbury, Characteristics. Vol. I, 216-234; Vol. II, 256-272.

 Slide Presentation II—Conversation, Portraits, Tea

Thursday: Selections from Addison, The Spectator. Nos. 2, 10, 2l, 69, 65, 75, 409; Selections from John Ovington, An Essay upon the Nature and Qualities of Tea, 1699.

 Lecture on the Discourse of Taste, Conversation, Taste and Commerce, the Coffeehouse, the rituals of Tea and Taste.

 Readings: Eagleton, 9-27; Kowaleski-Wallace, 19-36; Pointon, Hanging the Head, 107-76; Schivelbusch, 34-84; Solkin, 1-27.

 Tuesday: Alexander Pope, "Windsor-Forest," 1713.

Thursday: Pope, The Rape of the Lock, 1712, 1714, 1717

 Tuesday: Pope, The Rape of the Lock

 Readings: Brown, 6-45, 94-127; Bunn; Deutsch, 40-82; Landa; Staves, "Pope's Refinement."

Thursday: Pope, Epistle, To Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington, 1733

 Handout with brief selections (On Palladio— Isaac Ware. A Complete Body of Architecture, 1756; On Classical Architecture—James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, The Antiquities of Athens, 1762; On the Earl of Burlington— Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England, 1771, 1780.

 Readings: Bramston; Ferraro; Lubbock; Nelson.

Week 7

 Tuesday: *Take Home Midterm Examination Due

 Slide Presentation III—Luxury and the Disciplines of Taste

 Selections from Henry Fielding, "Of Drunkenness, A Second Consequence of Luxury Among the Vulgar," An Enquiry Into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers, 1751.

 Selections from Jonas Hanway, "An Essay on Tea" A Journal of Eight Days Journey, 1757.

 Reading: Sekora, 63-109.

Thursday: Selections from Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, III.1; III.27; IV. 1; IV. 2; IV. 3, IV.4.

 Tuesday: *Student Presentations, Institutions of Taste

Thursday: *Student Presentations, Institutions of Taste

 Reading: Samuel Foote, from Taste (Dramatic Sketch in an Auction Room), 1751-53.

 Tuesday: Burney, Evelina

Thursday: Burney, Evelina

 Tuesday: Burney, Evelina

Thursday: Burney, Evelina

 Readings: "Evelina: Cultural Contexts" in Bedford Cultural Edition, 437-578; Dykstal.

 Tuesday: William Beckford, Vathek

Thursday: Beckford, Vathek

 Readings: Craig, Liu, Shaffer.

Week 12

 Tuesday: Boston Tea Party; Selections from Tea Leaves. "A Lady's Adieu to Her Tea-Table." Selections from Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776, 23-44.

 Handout/Illustration: Anon., A Society of Patriotic Ladies, 1775.

Thursday: Royall Tyler, The Contrast, 1787

 Readings: Shields, xiii-6, 99-140; Evelev.

 Tuesday: Selections from Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790, 71-88; Selections from Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men, 1790, 1-28.

 Handout/Illustration: Gillray, "FASHION before EASE;—or,—A good Constitution sacrificed, for a Fantastic Form," 1793.

Thursday: Film: Ettore Scola. La Nuit de Varennes, 1982.

 Readings: Landes, 94-104; Paulson, Representations, 57-87.

 Tuesday: Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover; A Romance, 1992 Slide Presentation IV—On Artifacts and Attitudes

Thursday: *Critique Due

 Sontag, The Volcano Lover

 Readings: Hamblyn; Kennedy; Pointon, Strategies for Showing, 173-227.

 *Take Home Final Examination Due During Finals Week

Slide Presentation I

William Hogarth. The Five Orders of Periwigs, 1761. Anon. The Female Pyramid, Oxford Magazine, 1771; J. Bretherton after Henry Bunbury. The Houndsditch Macaroni, 1772; J. Bretherton after Henry Bunbury. The St. James's Macaroni, 1772; Anon. The Macaronies, Lady's Magazine, iv, 1773; J. R. Smith. Miss Macaroni and her Gallant at a Print-Shop, 1773; Thomas Rowlandson after Humphry Repton. 1784 or The Fashions of the Day; Anon. The Extravagance or The Mountain Head Dress of 1776.

Slide Presentation II

John Closterman. The 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury and the Hon. Maurice Ashley-Cooper, c.1700-1; Man and Child Drinking Tea, 1725; Gawen Hamilton. Family Group, c.1730; William Hogarth. The House of Cards, 1730, and The Children's Party, 1730; Hogarth. A Family Party, c.1730-35

Slide Presentation III

Johann Zoffany. Lord Willoughby de Broke and His Family, 1766; Zoffany. Queen Charlotte with her Two Eldest Sons, 1764; William Hogarth. Gin Lane, and Beer Street, 1751.

Slide Presentation IV

George Romney. Emma Hamilton (?) as a Bacchante; Rehberg & Piroli. Emma Hamilton in the "Attitude" of a Vestal Virgin; Portland Vase; William Blake. The Spiritual Form of Nelson Guiding Leviathan, c.1805-1809.

Group Project:

Prepare, with members of your group, a 15-minute presentation on one of the institutions that promoted and cultivated Taste in eighteenth-century France or England. The following are possible subjects: The (French) Encyclopédistes or English Cyclopedists, Grub Street, official Academies such as The Royal Academy in England or the French Academy, Galleries, Publishing Projects such as Johnson's Lives of the Poets or his Dictionary, Vauxhall Gardens, the Grand Tour, the Coffee House, the Opera. Then, listen to all of the presentations and write (on your own) a two-page report that compares the institution described in another presentation to the institution you chose.

Critique:

Write a 1,500-word critique of Susan Sontag's The Volcano Lover. Imagine that you are writing for students who have not taken this class. Tell them what kinds of Taste-related character types the book contains. Indicate how well you feel the book engages the issues of cultivating, promoting, and revolutionizing Taste. In short, what will readers learn from reading a twentieth-century novel about eighteenth-century Taste?

Sample Final Examination Questions:

What role do institutions of Taste play in transforming women such as Pope's Belinda, Burney's Evelina, and Sontag's Emy Lyon into Ladies? What are the rewards for successful transformation and the punishments for failure? Be certain to refer to specific passages and incidents from your reading.

In 1776, Sir Joshua Reynolds concluded his seventh annual "Discourse on Art" to The Royal Academy by asserting that "the real substance . . . of what goes under the name of taste, is fixed and established in the nature of things." Write a brief dialogue which

features Royall Tyler's Manly and Dimple debating this statement. Then explain, with reference to The Contrast and to your knowledge of the history and theory of Taste, the logic of your debate. Refer to other texts we have studied.

Sample Journal Questions:

In Molière's The Would Be Gentleman, why don't Monsieur Jourdain's teachers give him the "class or culture" he is seeking? How do they promote their services? Could they take a different approach?

In The Would Be Gentleman, the noble Dorante has the "class or culture" that Jourdain wants. Yet, it could also be argued that he is the "villain of the piece." Make this argument.

What assumptions does Riggs make about the sources of nobility and Taste in his article on Molière's drama? What assertions does Bourdieu make in the selections from Distinction? Does the play confirm the arguments of either critic?

How is Royall Tyler's attack on luxury in The Contrast similar to Fielding's attack on luxury? In what way is it different?

While the other would-be ladies and gentlemen we have encountered are objects of ridicule, The Contrast's would-be gentleman, Dimple, is cast as the villain. How does Tyler "justify" this characterization as particularly American?

This is a very selective list of sources on Taste that omits many excellent works. Our goal was to select representative works. We have included works that are especially useful for their theoretical breadth, works that provide historical contexts, and works addressed to issues of Taste in the required texts.

Ashfield, Andrew and Peter de Bolla. The Sublime: A Reader in Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Benedict, Barbara. "The `Curious Attitude' in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Observing and Owning." Eighteenth-Century Life 14 (1990): 59-98.

Bermingham, Ann and John Brewer, eds. The Consumption of Culture 1600-1800. London: Routledge, 1995.

Bernstein, Maxine and Robert Boyers. "Women, the Arts, and the Politics of Culture: An Interview with Susan Sontag." Conversations with Susan Sontag. Ed. Leland A. Poague. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995. 57-78.

Black, Jeremy. The British Abroad: The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992.

Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.

Bramston, James. The Man of Taste, Occasion'd by an Epistle of Mr. Pope's on That Subject. London, 1733.

Braverman, Richard. "The Rake's Progress Revisited: Politics and Comedy in the Restoration." Cultural Readings of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Theater. Ed. J. Douglas Canfield and Deborah C. Payne. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995. 141-168.

Brewer, John and Roy Porter, eds. Consumption and the World of Goods. London: Routledge, 1993.

Brown, Laura. Alexander Pope. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985.

Bunn, James H. "The Aesthetics of British Mercantilism." New Literary History 11 (1980): 303-321.

Canfield, J. Douglas. Tricksters & Estates: On the Ideology of Restoration Comedy. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997.

Craig, Randall. "Beckford's Inversion of Romance in Vathek." Orbis Litterarum 39 (1984): 95-106.

DeBruyn, Frans. "Edmund Burke's Natural Aristocrat: The `Man of Taste' as a Political Ideal." Eighteenth-Century Life 11 (1987): 41-60.

Denvir, Bernard. The Eighteenth Century: Art, Design and society, 1689-1789. A Documentary History of Taste in Britain. London: Longman, 1983. [Contains Foote, Ware, Stuart & Revett, Walpole]

Deutsch, Helen. Resemblance & Disgrace: Alexander Pope and the Deformation of Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996.

Dykstal, Timothy. "Evelina and the Culture Industry." Criticism 37 (1987): 41-60.

Eagleton, Terry. The Function of Criticism from The Spectator to Post-Structuralism. London: Verso, 1984.

—. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990.

Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. 2 Vols. New York: Pantheon, 1978.

Evelev, John. "The Contrast: The Problem of Theatricality and Political and Social Crisis in Postrevolutionary America." Early American Literature 31 (1996): 74-97.

Ferraro, Julian. "Taste and Use: Pope's Epistle to Burlington." British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 19 (1996): 141-159.

Hamblyn, Richard. "Private Cabinets and Popular Geology: The British Audiences for Volcanoes in the Eighteenth Century." Transports: Travel, Pleasure, and Imaginative Geography, 1600-1830. Ed. Chloe Chard and Helen Langdon. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. 179-206.

Kennedy, Liam. Susan Sontag: Mind as Passion. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995.

Kowaleski-Wallace, Elizabeth. Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping, and Business in the Eighteenth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Landa, Louis A. "Pope's Belinda, The General Emporie of the World, and the Wondrous Worm." South Atlantic Quarterly 70 (1971): 215-235.

Landes, Joan. Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.

Lipking, Lawrence. The Ordering of the Arts in Eighteenth-Century England. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970.

Liu, Alan. "Toward A Theory of Common Sense: Beckford's and Johnson's Rasselas." Texas Studies in Language and Literature 26(1984): 183-217.

Lubbock, Jules. The Tyranny of Taste: The Politics of Architecture and Design in Britain 1550-1960. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

McKendrick, Neil, John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb. The Birth of a Consumer Society: the Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.

Mackie, Erin. "Lady Credit and the Strange Case of the Hoop-Petticoat." College Literature 20 (1993): 27-44.

Mattick, Paul Jr., ed. Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics and the Reconstruction of Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Nelson, T.G.A. "Pope, Burlington, Architecture, and Politics: A Speculative Revisionist View." Eighteenth-Century Life 21 (1997): 455-461.

Paulson, Ronald. The Beautiful, Novel, and Strange: Aesthetics and Heterodoxy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

—. Representations of Revolution (1789-1820). New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.

Pears, Iain. The Discovery of Painting: The Growth of Interest in the Arts in England, 1680-1768. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.

Peters, J. S. "The Novelty; or, Print, Money, Fashion, Getting, Spending, and Glut." Cultural Readings of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Theater. Ed. J. Douglas Canfield and Deborah C. Payne. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995. 169-194.

Pointon, Marcia. Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation in Eighteenth-Century England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

—. Strategies for Showing: Women, Possession, and Representation in English Visual Culture 1665-1800. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Prince, Michael B. "The Eighteenth-Century Beauty Contest." Modern Language Quarterly 55 (1994): 251-279.

Ribeiro, Aileen. The Art of Dress: Fashion in England and France 1750-1820. New Haven: Yale University Press: 1995.

Riggs, Larry W. "Language and Art as Merchandise in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme." The University of South Florida Quarterly 17 (1978): 15-19, 32

Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants. Trans. David Jacobson. New York: Random House, 1992.

Sekora, John. Luxury: The Concept in Western Thought from Eden to Smollett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974.

Shaffer, E. S. "`To remind us of China'—William Beckford, Mental Traveller on the Grand Tour: The Construction of Significance in Landscape." Transports: Travel, Pleasure, and Imaginative Geography, 1600-1830. Ed. Chloe Chard and Helen Langdon. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. 207-242.

Shields, David S. Civil Tongues & Polite Letters in British America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

—. Oracles of Empire: Poetry, Politics, and Commerce in British America 1690-1750. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Solkin, David H. Painting for Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

Staves, Susan. "Pope's Refinement." The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 29 (1988), 145-165.

—. "The Secrets of Genteel Identity in The Man of Mode: Comedy of Manners vs. The Courtesy Book." Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 19 (1989): 117-128.

Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.