Cr. 3

This survey of English literature from the reigns of the Tudor through the Stuart kings spans a range of significant historical and cultural events: the use of print to reproduce and distribute written material; the Lutheran, and then the English Reformation; several shifts in the state church between Catholicism and Protestantism; England's strengthening into a formiddable military power; the flowering of English as a poetic language, and of the theatre that would become synonymous with Shakespeare; England's establishment of colonies in the New World; a civil war and the beheading of a king; vast increases in literacy, publication rates, and publications by women; and the restoration of a monarchy that would signal victory to the witty playwrights of the Resoration while indicating defeat for authors such as Milton and his Puritan contemporaries.

In the context of such a rich time period, this course examines a collection of literary works through five intertwining strands of inquiry: imagining new worlds (works by More, Sidney, Shakespeare, and others); religious reformations (works by Skelton, Marlowe, Foxe, and others); poetic visions (works by a range of early modern poets); women of question and questions of women (works by Cary, Middleton and seventeenth-century polemicists), and the theatre of regicide and current events in civil wartime England (works by Milton, Trapnel, and others). These strands of inquiry cover a range of literary genres, including prose romances and utopias, travel narratives, lyrics, plays, epics, and argumentative fiction and prose. Assignments include a midterm and a final exam, one short (four to five page) and one longer (eight to ten page) paper, and participation in annotating one out-of-print text: a project that may be featured on a class World Wide Web site. On occasion, class may meet in a computerized classroom.

This course aims at a comprehensive understanding of the literature of the English Renaissance, up to the middle of the 17th century. To achieve diversity, we will study different genres (drama, poetry, prose), and a variety of writers (More, Marlowe, Sidney, Spencer, Jonson, Milton, Donne, Webster). To achieve depth, we will focus on representative selections. In general, I prefer to use complete (or nearly complete) texts rather than selections, and I group texts in such a way that they respond to some common preoccupations central to these writers and their times. Our reading of these texts will rest firmly on the religious, intellectual, social, economic, and political forces which shaped this literature. Above all, through this study of texts and contexts, we will attempt to uncover the nature of the change which transformed the medieval world into one so close to our own in spirit and temper.

Class format will involve more discussion than lecture. Students may expect one short paper (five to six pages), a final paper (ten pages) and a midterm. They may also be called upon to make informal oral presentations and lead class discussions.