ENGL 209

Fall 2020 All Classes

All Classes

Early British Literature and Culture

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Credit: 3 hours.

This course surveys more than a thousand years of British literature from the early Middle Ages through the Renaissance and well into the eighteenth century. But what does "British literature" really mean, especially in the context of an island archipelago populated by multiple nations (England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales) and repeatedly subjected to foreign rule (either by violent invasion or dynastic succession)? The range of texts we thus characterize as "early British literature" is staggering, and part of our goal in this course will simply be to appreciate the sheer volume and breadth of written work created in Britain and Ireland between the sixth and eighteenth centuries. We will do this through a necessarily selective sampling of historical periods, languages, and genres. Our authors will range from the famous (e.g., Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton) to the lesser-known (e.g., Marie de France, Lady Mary Wroth, and Eliza Haywood) to the unknown (e.g., the anonymous Beowulf-poet).

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement and ENGL 200.

Students must register for one discussion and one lecture section.

This course satisfies the General Education Criteria in Fall 2022 for:

Humanities – Lit & Arts

Cultural Studies - Western

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ENGL 209 class schedule data for fall 2020
CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
33907	Online Discussion	AD1	10:00AM -10:50AM	F	n.a.	Cole, M	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/24/20-12/09/20 Degree Notes: Humanities - Lit & Arts, and Cultural Studies - Western course.
33909	Online Discussion	AD2	11:00AM -11:50AM	F	n.a.	Cole, M	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/24/20-12/09/20 Degree Notes: Humanities - Lit & Arts, and Cultural Studies - Western course.
41808	Online Discussion	AD3	12:00PM -12:50PM	F	n.a.	Valentine, S	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/24/20-12/09/20 Degree Notes: Humanities - Lit & Arts, and Cultural Studies - Western course.
41809	Online Discussion	AD4	1:00PM -1:50PM	F	n.a.	Valentine, S	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/24/20-12/09/20 Degree Notes: Humanities - Lit & Arts, and Cultural Studies - Western course.
33895	Online Lecture	AL1	11:00AM -11:50AM	MW	n.a.	Stevens, A	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/24/20-12/09/20 Degree Notes: Humanities - Lit & Arts, and Cultural Studies - Western course. Section Info: This course covers British literature from 0 to 1800. Rather than aiming for coverage, we will read closely a limited set of representative works from different genres from the eighth to the late eighteenth century, including lyric poetry, drama, satire, polemical prose, and amatory fiction. In so doing, we’ll consider how politics, religion, and landscape shaped Britain’s national literature. We’ll attend to the evolution of the English language. We’ll note how scholars use certain historical turning points to justify such boundaries as ‘medieval,’ ‘early modern,’ and ‘restoration.’ We’ll weigh the usefulness of this periodization, as well as the potential problems with it, including recent passionate debates over the period designation ‘Anglo-Saxon’. We will furthermore analyze our emotional engagement with the works we read. What formal qualities, themes, and literary conventions draw us in—or indeed, estrange us? What’s familiar about the distant past, and what’s alien, unexpected, and surprising? Which old works we read have been re-purposed into new ones? To pursue this last question we’ll adopt a ‘text, context, and afterlife’ approach, tracing out the evolution and history of adaptation of specific texts and forms (the sonnet form, for instance). Expect to encounter such writers as Unknown, Marie de France, and Geoffrey Chaucer; William Shakespeare, John Donne, and Andrew Marvell; and Margaret Cavendish, Jonathan Swift, and Eliza Haywood. Expect to visit the preaching cross near Solway firth, in what once was Northumbria; the city of York on the feast of Corpus Christi; the perilous court of King Henry VIII; the Globe theater of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men; and the dressing room of an eighteenth-century lady. We open with one of the earliest poems in the Old English corpus, the Dream of the Rood. And finally, since according to Coleridge’s own notes the poem came to him in a dream-vision in 1797, we close with Kubla Khan. Course texts TBA but likely the Broadway Anthology of British Literature Concise Edition Volume A and one stand-alone edition of a Shakespeare play.