Syllabus
Weeks 1-2 Introduction to the course: political, literary and cultural background. The context of the first Stuart Court: King James I (writings and ideas). Texts will be provided.
Week 3 Travel, colonialism and nationalism. Key texts: Michael Drayton, ‘Ode To The Virginian Voyage’; short extract from Drayton, Poly-Olbion (‘Robin Hood’).
Week 4 Introduction to BenJonson and the social and cultural context of his poetry (satire, love poems, the poetry of civility, poetry of praise, the country house poem). Key texts: ‘Ode to Himself,’ ‘Inviting a Friend to Supper,’ ‘To Penshurst.’
Week 5 Jacobean women writers: Aemilia Lanyer (the country house poem; poetry of praise). Key texts: ‘Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women,’ ‘The Description of Cookham.’
Week 6 Gender and class in Jacobean women’s writing: Rachel Speght and Lady Mary Wroth.
Week 7 John Donne: Images of love and religion. Key texts: ‘The Flea’, ‘The Good-Morrow,’ ‘The Canonisation,’ ‘The Sun Rising,’ ‘To His Mistress Going to Bed,’ ‘Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward,’ Holy Sonnets.
Week 8 1. Midterm examination.
2. Jacobean prose: Francis Bacon’s Essays (‘On Parents and Children’, ‘On Love’, on ‘Marriage and the Single Life’)
Week 9 1. Literary culture in the reign of Charles I; 2.“Paper bullets”: literary responses to the English Civil War (see ‘Voices of the War’ in NAEL 1); other texts for discussion (for example, news-books) will be provided by the tutor.
Week 10 Interregnum literature: Andrew Marvell (‘To his Coy Mistress’, ‘Upon Appleton House,’ ‘An Horatian Ode: On Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’).
Week 11 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan; Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy.
Week 12 Restoration poetry and prose: John Dryden, ‘Annus Mirabilis,’ John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress. Introduction to John Milton, Paradise Lost.
Week 13 John Milton, Paradise Lost.
Weeks 14-15 Restoration women writers: Anne Finch, ‘The Introduction’; Aphra Behn, Oroonoko.
FINAL EXAM