Spring 2007

E 374K • Elizabethan Poetry and Prose

Course Description

This course surveys the prose and poetry of the sixteenth century--More, Gascoigne, Spenser, Sidney, Elyot, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, and other folks too numerous to mention here. The aim of this course is to help you put this greatest age of English into historical and literary perspective: We'll learn about literary forms, publication, audience, patronage, and coteries; about cosmology and changes in the conception of the universe; about political history, especially the fascinating (and bloody) Tudors; about the Reformation and the sweeping changes it brought to England; about individual authors, their backgrounds and spheres of influence. Mostly we'll read a great deal of very good literature.

Grading Policy

Reading journal 40%
Three 5-page papers 45%
Final examination 15%

Texts

Course packet

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