This course will introduce
you to some of the significant works and writers of English literature through
the the Restoration Period (1660-1700), with particular attention to the linguistic,
historical, cultural, and biographical contexts of this older literature as
well as its most important literary modes and forms: epic, lyric and narrative poetry, drama.
Writers will include the Beowulf and Pearl poets, Chaucer, Christopher Marlowe,
Spenser, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Donne, and John Milton. Lectures on the
works and their contexts will be combined with discussion of questions posed by
this instructor and class members, both in class and electronically. Some work
will be done in small groups as well, and each group will report on an
important medieval, sixteenth-, or seventeenth-century writer or work that is
not part of the required reading–for example, Majorie Kempe, Sir Philip
Sidney’s Apology for Poetry, or
Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan.
Course requirements
- Attendance (5%)
- Electronic class discussion (10%)
- Group Report (10%)
- Three exams (medieval, 16thC, 17thC) (45%)
- Two comparison papers (30%)
- Extra credit projects (up to 5 extra course
grade points)
Required Text:
Norton Anthology of English
Literature, Volume 1