01 MW7 CAC 31251 MASIELLO MU-208
01-Epic Romance and the Early Modern Self: Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and Sidney’s Arcadia
The Elizabethan age witnessed an explosion in English literary creativity. In this class we will read only two texts—Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596) and Sir Philip Sidney’s New Arcadia (the 1594 version). The first is among the greatest poems in our language, and the second among the greatest prose works. Both helped set the stage for the famous generation that followed: we find echoes of both works, for instance, in Shakespeare’s great tragedies. Each is connected to two interrelated and much-debated genres, epic and romance; we’ll sort out some of the connections and differences as we go along. What is most important and exciting, however, is not only that both texts are remarkably complex in their exploration of the pressing issues of their historical moment—politics, theology, ecclesiology, rhetoric, poetics, and moral philosophy as these things existed in Elizabethan England—but of some eternal questions: what does it mean to be a human self? What is the relationship of selfhood to language? In what sense are our ideas, aspirations, and terrors expressible in the words we use? Is there any unity in the ever-shifting appearances of this world? What is justice, and how is it best administered? How can we talk about the divine? How do the two genders relate? Is it possible to pose virtually opposite views of reality in the very same words? Are unity and multiplicity, stasis and mutability reconcilable? The Faerie Queene and the Arcadia differ in many respects, but both offer important insights into the foundations of what we have come to think of as “modernity.” To read them is, in many ways, to rediscover ourselves in the enormous complexity of our cultural and literary heritage.
This class will focus on quality rather than quantity. There are six requirements: regular attendance; participation; serious and diligent close reading (I expect you to have learned how to do this in 219!); occasional response papers and/or quizzes; two 10-12 page essays, one for each text; last and above all, a genuine love of Renaissance literature. That’s your job: mine is to take these two masterpieces and bring them to life. You will find that the rewards are rich indeed.
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