EN 251: British Literature I
Fall Semester 2008
Section A: Monday and Thursday 11:00-12:15
Section B: Monday and Thursday 2:00-3:15
Syllabus
Subject to revision
(All readings are in the Norton Anthology of English Literature or Shakespeare's The Tempest except those highlighted.)
PART ONE: Other Worlds
Thursday 9/4:Introduction. Selections from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.
Monday 9/8: Sir Thomas More, Utopia
Response paper 1.
Thursday 9/11: Utopia, continued
Monday 9/15: Michel
de Montaigne, “Of Cannibals”
Response paper 2.
Thursday 9/18: Selections from Sir Walter Ralegh, “Empire of Guiana,” and other “discovery” literature
Monday 9/22: Edmund Spenser: Amoretti
15; The Faerie Queene: Letter to Ralegh; Prologue to
Book 1; Book 1, Canto 6; Prologue
to Book 2
Response paper 3.
Thursday 9/25: John Drayton, "Ode to the Virginia Voyage"; Ben Jonson, "The Masque of Blackness"
Monday 9/29: William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1
Thursday 10/2: The Tempest, Acts 2
Monday 10/6:The Tempest, Acts 3-4
Thursday 10/9: [No class meeting.]
Tuesday 10/14 [Monday classes meet]: The Tempest, Act 5
Thursday 10/16: Thesis workshop
Monday 10/20: Mid-Term Exam
PART TWO: Beauty, Love, and Sex
Thursday 10/23: Shakespeare, Selected Sonnets
Monday 10/27: Shakespeare, Selected Sonnets
Thursday 10/30: Shakespeare, Selected Sonnets
Response paper 6.
Monday 11/3: Invitations to Love: Poems by Ralegh, Marlowe, and Donne
Response paper 7.
Thursday 11/6: John Donne, Selected Poems
Monday 11/10: John Donne, Selected Poems
Response paper 8.
Thursday 11/13: John Donne, "Holy Sonnets"
Monday 11/17: Lady Mary Wroth, Selections from Pamphilia to Amphilanthus
Also read these eight Renaissance poems.
Response paper 9.
Thursday 11/20: Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”
Monday 11/24: Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock:
Letter to Arabella Fermor, and Canto 1
Response paper 10.
THANKSGIVING BREAK
Monday 12/1: The Rape of the Lock: Cantos 2-3
Thursday 12/4: The Rape of the Lock: Cantos 4-5
Monday 12/8: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”
Monday 12/15, 1:30 PM: Final Exam for Section A (Monday, Thursday 11:00)
Tuesday 12/16, 1:30 PM: Final Exam for Section B (Monday, Thursday 2:00)
The second essay returned with comments at the final exam.
Friday 12/19, 5:00 PM: Revisions of second essay due.