History of British Literature: Medieval to Renaissance

Transcription

1 History of British Literature: Medieval to Renaissance Professor John Hunt, LA 127 LIT (CRN 73922) Fall 2015 Office hours TR 2-3 & by appt. TR 11:10-12:30 TA Sarah Kahn, Corbin 258 Forestry 305 Office hour W 11:45-12:45 & by appt. Texts: o o Longman Anthology vol. 1A: The Middle Ages Norton Anthology vol. B: The 16 th century and early 17 th Century Course goals: This class will give you 1) some acquaintance with great English writings of the distant past, 2) some knowledge of the historical conditions at the times the works were written, 3) some literary terms and concepts relevant not only to these works but to many others, and 4) some help with reading poetry. It will also ask you to make your own sense of selected works, by asking critical questions and advancing argumentative claims in several kinds of writing assignments. Schedule of reading assignments: (Read each assignment in advance of the class meeting on the day it s listed. Page numbers refer to the most recent edition of each textbook: Longman 4 th and Norton 9 th. If you buy an earlier edition, you ll need to find the correct page numbers in that text. You could look either at a classmate s text or at the Longman copy that I ve placed on reserve at the library.) Sept. 1 Course overview and Origins of medieval England No assigned readings 3 Anglo-Saxon culture Bede, An Ecclesiastical History of the English People (153-60) Bishop Asser, The Life of King Alfred (160-62) King Alfred, preface to work by St. Gregory (162-64) The Dream of the Rood (148-52) Sept. 8 Tribal heroism and epic poetry Taliesin poems (168-72) Ohthere s Journeys (164-66) Beowulf, lines (32-85) 10 Elegiac poetry 2 pp. paper due (min.) Beowulf, lines (85-107) The Wanderer, Wulf and Eadwacer, and The Wife s Lament (172-78) Sept. 15 The Normans and British identity The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (167-68)

2 Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain (182-94) Gerald of Wales, The Instruction of Princes (194-96) Thomas Malory, The Day of Destiny in Morte Darthur ( ) 17 Romance narratives Marie de France, Lanval (200-17) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 1-2 (219-47) Sept. 22 Competing moral codes Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 3-4 (247-77) 24 Secular and religious lyrics Middle English lyrics from The Cuckoo Song to The Wily Clerk (550-58) Adam lay ibounden and I sing of a maiden (559-60) Mary Is with Child (562-63) Now goeth sun under wood and Jesus My Sweet Lover (564) Dafydd ap Gwilym poems (566-73) William Dunbar poems (573-79) Geoffrey Chaucer, lines 1-18 of The Canterbury Tales (315-16, ) 29 Middle-class life Chaucer, General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (312-57) Chaucer s Retraction (440-41) Oct. 1 Affective piety 3 pp. paper due (min.) Julian of Norwich, Showings chs. 2, 13, and (480-83, , ) Margery Kempe, chs. 1-3, 18, and (529-36, , ) The Second Play of the Shepherds (501-21) Oct. 6 Briefly cover assigned reading, and then discuss exam The York Play of the Crucifixion (521-29) 8 First exam: The Middle Ages No assigned readings Oct. 13 Renaissance and Reformation Sir Thomas More, Utopia, Book 1 (569-97) The English Bible (673-76) John Calvin, The Institution of Christian Religion (681-84) Book of Common Prayer (689-92) 15 Review results of exam and first two papers, discuss third paper No assigned readings. (Note: this week s classes may be switched.) Oct. 20 Nationalism and morality Queen Elizabeth I, speech to Joint Delegation (749-50, ) Elizabeth, speech to troops at Tilbury and the Golden Speech (762-66) Sidney, The Defense of Poesy ( , , ) 22 Moral allegory Edmund Spenser, A Letter of the Author s (766-68, ) Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book 1, canto 1 (775-77, ) Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book 2, canto 12 (934-45)

3 Oct. 27 Tudor Petrarchism Renaissance Love and Desire (1000-3) Sir Thomas Wyatt, poems up to Mine own John Poins (646-58) Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, poems up to Th Assyrians king (661-64) Henry Constable, sonnet from Diana (1013) Samuel Daniel, sonnet 33 from Delia ( ) Michael Drayton, sonnet 61 from Idea ( ) Sir Philip Sidney, sonnets 1, 2, and 5 from Astrophil and Stella ( ) Sidney, sonnets 18, 20-21, 45, and 4 th song ( , 1092, ) 29 Later Petrarchism 4 pp. paper due (min.) William Shakespeare, sonnets 1, 3, 12, 15, and 20 ( ) Shakespeare, sonnets 60, 73, 87, 93, and 94 ( ) Shakespeare, sonnets 116, 129, 130, 135, 138, and 144 ( ) Thomas Campion, poems ( ) Lady Mary Wroth, Song and sonnet 1 from Pamphilia ( , ) Wroth, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus 39, 40, 68, and 74 ( ) Wroth, Crown of Sonnets 77 and 103 ( ) Nov. 3 Elizabethan drama Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, Prologue (1106-7, ) Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, scene 1 ( ) Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, scene 13 ( ) Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, act 1 ( ) 5 Jacobean tragedy Shakespeare, King Lear, act 1 scenes 1-2 ( ) John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, acts 1-2 ( ) Nov. 10 Jacobean tragedy Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, acts 3-5 ( ) 12 Metaphysical love poetry John Donne, The Flea ( ) Donne, The Sun Rising, The Indifferent, and The Canonization ( ) Donne, The Apparition and A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning ( ) Donne, A Lecture upon the Shadow and Elegy 19 ( ) Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress ( ) Nov. 17 Metaphysical religious poetry Donne, Holy Sonnets 5, 7, 13, 14, 17, 19 ( ) Donne, A Hymn to God the Father (1418) George Herbert, The Altar, Redemption, and Easter Wings (1705-9) Herbert, Church Monuments, Denial, and Virtue ( ) Herbert, The Holdfast, The Collar, and The Pulley ( ) Herbert, Death and Love (3) ( ) Richard Crashaw, To the Noblest of Ladies ( , ) 19 Humanity and the green world Edmund Spenser, Epithalamion (769 and ) Christopher Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (1126) Sir Walter Ralegh, The Nymph s Reply ( ) Marvell, A Dialogue Between the Soul and Body ( ) Marvell, The Picture of Little T.C. (1799)

4 Marvell, The Mower against Gardens (1801-2) Marvell, The Garden (1804-6) Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditation ( ) Nov. 24 The Cavalier attitude Sir Walter Ralegh, What is Our Life?, To His Son, and The Lie ( ) Ben Jonson, To My Book and On Something ( , ) Jonson, Inviting a Friend to Supper and To Penshurst ( ) Jonson, On My First Daughter and On My First Son ( ) Jonson, My Picture Left in Scotland (1551) Robert Herrick, poems from The Vine to To the Virgins (1756, ) Herrick, poems from His Return to London to To His Book s End ( ) Thomas Carew, A Rapture ( , ) Richard Lovelace, poems ( ) 26 No class (Thanksgiving) Dec. 1 The English Revolution Crisis of Authority and journalistic accounts ( ) Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Introduction and ch. 13 ( , ) Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, Part I, 1-6 and 9 ( ) John Milton, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates ( ) Milton, Areopagitica, first two excerpts ( ) Andrew Marvell, An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell s Return ( ) 3 Epic theodicy 6-7 pp. paper due. Milton, Paradise Lost 1, lines ( , ) Milton, Paradise Lost 2, lines 1-42 ( ) Milton, Paradise Lost 3, lines ( ) Milton, Paradise Lost 4, lines (2003-5) Dec 8 The trials of marriage Milton, Paradise Lost 4, lines ( ) Milton, Paradise Lost 4, lines ( ) Milton, Paradise Lost 9 ( ) Milton, Paradise Lost 10, lines Milton, Paradise Lost 10, lines Milton, Paradise Lost 10, lines ( , ) 10 Finish Milton and prepare for exam Dec. 17 Second exam: The Early Modern Period (10:10-12:10, finals week, same room) Critical introductions: You don t have to read most of the introductions to historical periods that both textbooks provide at the beginnings of major sections. Class lectures will cover any parts of these long introductions that I think are important. But I am assigning the brief introductions to particular writers and works that appear just before the assigned texts. My page numbers on the reading schedule above include most of those shorter introductions.

5 Moodle: To take this class, you will need to be able to access the Moodle online course supplement at where I will post the PowerPoint presentations that I use in class. Whenever possible I ll post these files in advance of class meetings, so that you can look at them as you read, and/or print them off and bring them to class to write notes on. Another option is to keep the files on a laptop, bring it to class, and record notes there. Course grade: Your final course grade will be based on the grades of several different written assignments, weighted as follows: 1. Exam on the Middle Ages: 20%, or more if better than the second exam grade. 2. Exam on the Early Modern Period: 30%, or less if worse than the first exam. 3. Writing assignments: 50%, with a more detailed breakdown to be announced in class. Exams: While the papers will ask you to think about some of the texts, the two exams will test what you know. Each one will ask you a large number of very specific questions that you can answer quite briefly. I will give partial credit for partially good answers, and I will ask quite a few open-ended questions (ones with more than one correct answer). Papers: You will be required to write four papers of increasing length: 2 pp., 3 pp., 4 pp., and 6-7 pp. Topics and guidelines for each will be announced in class and posted on Moodle. Attendance policy: 1) Attendance will be taken every day via sign-in sheet. If you have to miss class for a good reason, let me know in advance or very soon after (i.e., within a day or two) why you cannot attend and I ll record it as an excused absence. Such absences should be unpredictable, unavoidable, and rare. If you have things that you know will take you out of class often (a job, health issues, university business, family difficulties), please drop the course and take it some other time. 2) You re also allowed three unexcused absences, i.e. for your own reasons that you don t have to tell me about. More than three unexcused absences will lower your course grade. 3) Other than a documented emergency, there is no excuse for missing one of the two scheduled exams. I will offer a make-up exam in such cases, but otherwise assign you an F for the test. 4) If you are late for class, I would rather have you here than not, so don t hesitate to enter the room. But don t make a habit of walking in late or leaving early. If you know you need to leave class early, a quick word to that effect before class starts will be much appreciated. I will also appreciate your turning off cell phones and other noisy devices before class begins (and I ll try to remember to do the same!).

6 Class participation: Class discussion will not be graded, and not talking will not lower your course grade. Participating regularly and helpfully may raise your course grade from the calculated one, however. Although we re covering a lot of ground each week and I ll be conducting planned lectures, I will leave as much time as possible open for questions, comments, reactions, and discussion. Please take advantage of these opportunities, and don t worry about a question seeming ignorant: other people will probably be glad that you asked it. As will I: I want you to take charge of your own education, and your reactions tell me where to go next. Students with Disabilities: Students with documented disabilities will receive appropriate accommodations. Please speak with me privately at the beginning of the semester about any accommodations you need, and be prepared to provide a letter from your DSS Coordinator. I will work with you and Disability Services in the accommodation process. Plagiarism: All work submitted for this course must be your own and written solely for this course. While all the ideas discussed in our classroom are common property, unacknowledged use of others written work, whether paraphrased or quoted directly without attribution, constitutes plagiarism. Plagiarism is an affront to the fundamental values of an academic institution, indicating a lack of respect for intellectual labor and a lack of responsibility for one's part in sustaining an academic community. You must acknowledge, by citation of name, title, and location, all work that has influenced your thinking, using established academic guidelines for documentation. If you violate this policy I will take action according to university procedures spelled out in the Student Conduct Code at Academic deadlines: Please consult the university s Official Dates and Deadlines calendar at and for all add/drop and fee deadlines. The last time to drop classes on CyberBear is 5:00 PM, September 21.