Fall 2004

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. Mosly we’ll read a great deal of very good literature.

Grading Policy

You will keep an extensive journal of your reading which, while it is not in formal essay format, will teach you to write spontaneously in response to your reading. Two short papers (2-5 pages) will respond to specific aspects of your reading. A final examination will be based on the contents of your journal.

Texts

Rollins, The Renaissance in England
Packet of additional writings

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