01 MW6 CAC 33491 FULTON FH-A5
This course provides a rich survey of the literary and cultural history of England to 1800. We start by examining the complex combination of pagan heroism and nascent Christianity in the earliest works in English (Caedmon’s Hymn and Beowulf). We return to this combination of themes in such works as Shakespeare’s Hamlet, itself based on a story that is almost as old as Beowulf. (We will read the Old English of Beowulf in Seamus Heaney’s marvelous translation, with some attention given to the nature of Old English.) Following this close study of the inspired lyric of Caedmon and the heroic epic of Beowulf, we then trace the evolving problems of literary history through Chaucer’s great Middle English poem, The Canterbury Tales, the Romance-Epic The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser, along with a handful of Renaissance works by Thomas Wyatt, Edmund Spenser, John Donne, Elizabeth I, and William Shakespeare, ending with the Restoration and eighteenth-century achievements of Andrew Marvell, John Milton (Paradise Lost) and Alexander Pope.
The course has two main goals: to provide knowledge of the great works of early English literature, and to train students in the skills of close reading, literary analysis, and written argument. In addition to short written assignments, there will be two papers and two exams. Attendance is expected. |
