EN 251: British Literature I
Fall Semester 2005
Monday and Thursday 3:30-4:45 in CNS 208
Syllabus
Subject to revision
(All readings are in the Longman Anthology of British Literature except those highlighted;
click on underlined readings for links to e-texts.)
PART ONE: Other Worlds
Thursday 9/8:Introduction: "The Voyage of Bran"; selections from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
Monday 9/12: Sir Thomas More, Utopia
Response paper 1.
Thursday 9/15: Utopia, continued
Monday 9/19: Michel
de Montaigne, “Of Cannibals”
Response paper 2.
Thursday 9/22: Selections from Sir Walter Raleigh, “Empire of Guiana” and other “discovery” literature
Monday 9/26: Edmund Spenser: Amoretti
15; The Faerie Queene: Letter to Raleigh, Prologue to Book
1; Book 1, Canto 6; Prologue
to Book 2
Response paper 3.
Thursday 9/29: William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1
In the Longman Anthology, read:
Monday 10/3: The Tempest, Act 2
Read Act 2 of The Tempest (pp.1309-1321)
Thursday 10/6: The Tempest, Act 3
Monday 10/10: No class meeting -- Columbus Day Holiday.
Thursday 10/13: No class meeting.
Monday 10/17: The Tempest, Acts 4-5
Thursday 10/20: Thesis workshop
PART TWO: Poems of Beauty, Love, and Sex
Monday 10/24: Shakespeare, Sonnets 1, 3, 12, 15, 18, 20
Thursday 10/27: Shakespeare, Sonnets 29, 30, 31, 33, 35, 55, 60, 65, 71, 73, 80, 86, 87, 93, 94, 104, 106, 107, 116
Monday 10/31: Shakespeare, Sonnets 123, 124, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 138, 144, 147, 152.
Response paper 7: Write your own sonnet.
Thursday 11/3: John Donne, “The Good Morrow,” “Song (Go, and catch a falling star),” “The Sun Rising,” “The Indifferent,” “The Flea”
Monday 11/7: John Donne, “The Canonization,”
“Song: Sweetest Love, I do not go,” “Air and Angels,”
“Break of Day,” “A Valediction: Of Weeping,” “Love’s
Alchemy”
Response paper 8.
Thursday 11/10: John Donne, “The Apparition,” “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” “The Ecstasy,” “The Funeral,” “The Relic,” “Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed”
Monday 11/14: John Donne, Holy Sonnets
Thursday 11/17:
Selections from Lady Mary Wroth, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus; Tracts
on Women and Gender
Response paper 9.
Monday 11/21: Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”
Thursday 11/24: No class meeting -- Thanksgiving Holiday.
Monday 11/28: “Seduction” poems: Crashaw, “To the Countess of Denbigh”; Herrick, “Corinna’s Going A-Maying,” “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”; Carew, “A Rapture”
Thursday 12/1: Alexander Pope, The Rape of the
Lock, Letter to Arabella Fermor, and Canto 1
Response paper 10.
Monday 12/5: The Rape of the Lock, Cantos 2-3
Thursday 12/8: The Rape of the Lock, Cantos 4-5
Monday 12/12: Jonathan Swift, “The Lady’s Dressing Room”; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, “The Reasons that Induced Dr. S. to Write a Poem called The Lady’s Dressing Room”
Third essay due.
Tuesday 12/20: Final Exam.