This course is a condensed survey of English literature, beginning with The Dream of the Rood,
studying poetry of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, and concluding in the
seventeenth century with excerpts from John Milton's Paradise Lost. We will
discuss in class lots of poems by the men and women who composed in English over
this long span and consider some of the ways these poems were
preserved and transmitted.
Required texts:
The Norton
Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages Through the
Restoration and the Eighteenth Century. Volume One. 7th edition. M.H.
Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt, eds. New York: W W Norton & Company, 2001.
The online resources linked to the Readings listed below.
Class requirements:
Because so much of the final grade (25 percent) is based on active student participation in
directed discussions of the assigned readings, daily attendance is required. Our readings
from the text will be occasionally augmented by short research assignments using the library
and the internet (15 percent). The three exams, including the final, are broad essay questions
drawn from these discussions (each exam counts for 20 percent of the final grade). The essays
must be well written and must reflect a thorough knowledge of what we talked about in class.
Readings:
The Middle Ages:
Cædmon's Hymn,
The Dream of the
Rood,
Beowulf,
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
Geoffrey Chaucer,
Middle English Lyrics,
Julian of Norwich,
Margery Kempe
(First Exam)
The Sixteenth Century:
Sir Thomas Wyatt,
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey,
Queen Elizabeth,
Edmund Spenser,
Sir Walter Raleigh,
Sir Phillip Sidney,
Mary (Sidney) Herbert, Countess of Pembroke,
Christopher Marlowe,
William Shakespeare
(Second Exam)
The Early Seventeenth Century:
John Donne,
Aemelia Lanyer,
Ben Jonson,
Lady Mary Wroth,
George Herbert,
Katherine Phillips,
Andrew Marvell,
Margaret Cavendish,
John Milton
(Comprehensive Final Exam)