ENGL 209

Fall 2023 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:

Cultural Studies - Western

Humanities – Lit & Arts

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ENGL 209 class schedule data for fall 2023
CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
33907	Discussion/ Recitation	AD1	10:00AM -10:50AM	F	English Building	Majewski, H	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/21/23-12/06/23 Degree Notes: Humanities - Lit & Arts, and Cultural Studies - Western course.
33909	Discussion/ Recitation	AD2	11:00AM -11:50AM	F	English Building	Majewski, H	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/21/23-12/06/23 Degree Notes: Humanities - Lit & Arts, and Cultural Studies - Western course.
41808	Discussion/ Recitation	AD3	12:00PM -12:50PM	F	English Building	Mecolli, M	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/21/23-12/06/23 Degree Notes: Humanities - Lit & Arts, and Cultural Studies - Western course.
41809	Discussion/ Recitation	AD4	1:00PM -1:50PM	F	English Building	Mecolli, M	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/21/23-12/06/23 Degree Notes: Humanities - Lit & Arts, and Cultural Studies - Western course.
33895	Lecture	AL1	1:00PM -1:50PM	MW	Henry Administration Bldg	Stevens, A	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/21/23-12/06/23 Degree Notes: Humanities - Lit & Arts, and Cultural Studies - Western course. Section Info: FA23 ENGL 209 Early British Lit and Culture - Andrea Stevens: This course covers British literature from 0 to 1800. Rather than aiming for coverage, we will read closely a limited set of 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 these categories of periodization—as well as the potential problems with them. We will furthermore analyze our emotional engagement with the works we read. What formal qualities, themes, and conventions draw us in—or, indeed, estrange us? What’s familiar about the distant past, and what’s alien, unexpected, and surprising? 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 Shakespeare and his 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.