Syllabus
Lectures:
1. Old and Middle English Poetry and Prose
2. Alliterative Revival, Geoffrey Chaucer
3. Renaissance Period – Background, Elizabethan Period, Renaissance love poetry
4. English Renaissance Drama, William Shakespeare
5. Late Renaissance – Ben Jonson, John Donne
6. Civil War – John Milton and Others
7. Restoration Period – Drama and Prose
8. Eighteenth Century – Introduction and Poetry
9. The Rise of the Novel
10. The Development of the Novel, Late Classicism
11. Pre-Romantic Poetry Seminars: 25/02 Introduction to the Course 03/03 Beowulf 10/3 The Canterbury Tales (“General Prologue”, “Pardoner’s Tale”) 17/03 The Sonnet (Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare) 24/03 Pastoral and Metaphysical Poetry (Marlowe, Raleigh, Donne) 31/03 A Midsummer Night’s Dream 07/04 Hamlet 14/04 Religious Literature: “The Dream of the Rood”, Everyman 21/04 Paradise Lost (extract), Pilgrim’s Progress (extract) 28/04 Jonathan Swift: A Modest Proposal, Gulliver’s Travels (extract) 05/05 18th Century Novel: Robinson Crusoe (extract), Tristram Shandy (extract) 12/05 Pre-Romantic Poetry: William Blake and Robert Burns (selected poems)
Annotation
The aim of this course is to introduce students to some major works of English literature from its earliest beginnings to the second half of the eighteenth century. The lectures are designed to offer a general historical, social and cultural context for the course texts.
The seminars will deal with reading and analysis of the individual selected works.