English 341.02 Survey of British Literature I Fall 1999

Instructor: Stephan Flores

Syllabus

(note that additional secondary works shall be placed on reserve early in the semester)

8/24 Introduction; The Dream of the Rood; Perspectives: Ethnic and Religious Encounters (124-25); Bede, from An Ecclesiastical History of the English People (126-31)

8/26 The Wanderer; Wulf and Eadwacer; The Wife's Lament; The Seafarer (handout); "The Middle Ages" (3-26)

8/31 Journal Entry, Group 1 (JE1); Beowulf

9/2 Journal Entry, Group 2 (JE2); Beowulf

9/7 Beowulf; Tolkien, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" (on reserve); recommended: Judith; see also many additional books on reserve

9/9 "Arthurian Myth in the History of Britain" (152-64, esp. Geoffrey of Monmouth); Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

9/14 JE2; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

9/16 JE1; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Benson, "The Meaning of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (on reserve)

9/21 Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, The General Prologue

9/23 The Miller's Tale

9/28 Critical Summary due; The Wife of Bath's Tale

9/30 JE1; The Wife of Bath's Tale; Carruthers, "The Wife of Bath and the Painting of Lions" (on reserve); see also The Wife of Bath: A Case Study in Contemporary Criticism (on reserve), with essays by Patterson, Finke, Fradenburg, Leicester, and Hansen.

10/5 JE2; The Pardoner's Tale

10/7 Skelton, Philip Sparrow; Wyatt's verse

10/12 Essay 1 due; Perspectives: Government and Self-Government (707-19)

10/14 Spenser, The Faerie Queen, Book I, Cantos 1-2

10/19 The Faerie Queen, Book I, Cantos 3-6

10/21 The Faerie Queen, Book I, Cantos 7-9

10/26 Critical Response due (on The Faerie Queen); The Faerie Queen, Book I, Cantos 10-12; Elizabeth I (1029-35)

10/28 JE1; Shakespeare, Sonnets (1169-78)

11/2 JE2; Marlowe, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" (1098); Raleigh, "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" (1099); Donne, "The Bait" (1558); recommended: Marlowe, Hero and Leander

11/4 Donne (1549-68) esp. "The Canonization," The Flea," "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"

11/9 JE2; Donne, "The Ecstasy," Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed," Holy Sonnets, esp. #6 and #10; Perspectives: Tracts on Women and Gender (1329-54)

11/11 JE1; Marvell, "The Nymph Complaining for the Death of Her Fawn," "To His Coy Mistress," "The Mower Against Gardens," "The Mower's Song," "The Garden"; Perspectives: The Civil War, or the War of Three Kingdoms: Charles I, Eikon Basilike (1649) and Milton/Gauden, Eikonoklastes

11/16 Prospectus for Critical Project due; Hobbes, from Leviathan (Ch. 13: Of the Social Condition of Mankind as Concerning Their Felicity, and Misery); Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel; Charles II, His Majesty's Declaration

11/18 Milton, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso; Lycidas

11/30 Etherege, The Man of Mode

12/2 JE1; The Man of Mode; Wess, "Utopian Rhetoric in The Man of Mode" (on reserve)

12/7 JE2; Behn, "The Disappointment" and Rochester, "The Imperfect Enjoyment"; also peruse rest of Behn's and Rochester's poetry; Aphra Behn in Context: Coterie Writing (2139-49); recommended: Philips's poetry (1646-53)

12/9 Pope, The Rape of the Lock

12/17 Final exam meeting, 1:00 p.m.-3 p.m. (probably choice of writing on Pope's The Rape of the Lock, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Part Four, Behn Oroonoko, or Gay's The Beggar's Opera)