ENG 431W Studies in 16th & 17th Century Literature TR 10:30–11:45
Professor Mark Heberle
RENAISSANCE IMPERIAL EPIC
The great works you will be reading in this course are impressive monuments of Western culture. They also employ and sometimes question an ideological demonology and proto-colonialist quest narrative that we have come to inherit without being aware of it until events like September 11 and its continuing aftermath jolt us into recognition. Therefore, although our primary focus will be literary features of the Renaissance epic, we will also be looking at the historical, political, and cultural truths and distortions to which they respond and contribute.
We begin with a complete reading of Vergil’s AENEID, the most influential work of Western literature, and proceed to look at significant excerpts from subsequent works that deliberately supplement, transcend, or quarrel with the national Roman epic of historical tragedy and historical triumph: Ariosto’s ORLANDO FURIOSO (1532), Camoens’s THE LUSIADS (1572), Tasso’s JERUSALEM DELIVERED (1575), Spenser’s the FAERIE QUEENE (1596), and Milton’s PARADISE LOST (1667) and PARADISE REGAINED (1671). We will come to intimately understand and appreciate epic literary conventions, but we will also come to learn much about war, violent religious controversy, ethics, politics, and gender roles: women are enormously important in all but the last of these works, usually as threats to the imperial mission but also as its catalyst, participant, or inspiration.
You will be writing a brief comparison paper on some feature of the AENEID that is rewritten in a later epic; posting regularly to laulima and revising six of your posts as mini-essays, and producing a final research paper on one or more of the post-Vergilian epics.
REQUIREMENTS
Attendance and participation (10%)
Aeneid comparison paper (20%)
Posts and electronic porfolio (30%)
Research paper (30%)
Final exam (10%)
REQUIRED TEXTS:
Vergil, The Aeneid
Ariosto, Orlando Furioso
Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered
Camoens, The Lusiads
Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Books 1 and 3
Milton, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained