NOTE: check the Links section of the syllabus for online resources for all the texts below. There you will find background information, notes, summaries, images, sound files, and collections of other links.
Week One
Jan 12 Introduction to the class
- Homework: read the selections from Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English
People (available here)
Jan 14 Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England: Bede’s story of King Edwin
- Homework: read “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer&rdquo (available here)
- Writing Exercise One (due Jan 19): Notice how each of these poems contains
some progress from sorrow to consolation, often on several different levels.
What words or phrases indicate a change in mood? What brings about this change?
Discuss the representation of ‘reversal’ or change in one of these
poems.
Week Two
Jan 17 No Class: Martin Luther King Day
Jan 19 Poetry in English: Bede’s story of Cædmon
Jan 21 Elegy and the voice: “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer”
- Homework: read Beowulf
- Writing Exercise Two (due Jan 24): Grendel and his mother are monstrous, but
are they also ‘human’? How are they described by the Danes? What
does the narrator say about them? Compare these characters to the modern conception
of a ‘monster’—either fictional characters such as Frankenstein
or Dracula, or historical ‘monsters’ such as Jeffrey Dahmer or
Adolf Hitler. What, specifically, makes someone or something a ‘monster’?
Week Three
Jan 24-28 Beowulf
- Homework: Read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- Writing Exercise Three (due Jan 31): How is Gawain different from Beowulf?
how are they similar—what values do they share? How is Arthur’s
courtly world different from the society of Hrothgar’s hall? Compare
or contrast some aspect of the heroes and cultural values of these two poems.
Week Four
Jan 31-Feb 4 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- Homework: read the “General Prologue” to the The Canterbury Tales, and the introductory section on “Chaucer’s Language.” Choose a passage of 25 lines from the “General Prologue” and do a line-for-line translation into modern English prose.
Week Five
Feb 7-11 Chaucer, “General Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales
- Homework: Read “The Knight’s Tale” and “The Miller’s Tale”
- Writing Exercise Four (due Feb 16): Discuss whether or in what sense(s) “The Miller’s Tale” is a parody of “The Knight’s Tale.”
Week Six
Feb 14 “The Knight’s Tale”
Feb 16 “The Knight’s Tale” and “The Miller’s Tale”
Feb 18 No Class
- Homework: Read “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”
Week Seven
Feb 21 “The Miller’s Tale”
Feb 23 “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”
Feb 25 Midterm Exam
- Homework: Read Malory, Morte Darthur
- Writing Exercise Five (due Feb 28): read the excerpt from T. H. White, The Once and Future King (available here). Discuss some differences between White’s novelistic style and Malory’s prose.
Week Eight
Feb 28-Mar 4 Malory, Morte Darthur
- Homework: Read Marlowe, Doctor Faustus; also read the background material in Keefer’s edition on the sources of the Faust legend.
Week Nine
Mar 7-11 Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
- Homework: Read Shakespeare’s Sonnets (our discussion will touch on sonnets 1, 2, 3, 5, 12, 15, 17, 18, 20, 29, 30, 32, 35, 55, 60, 65, 73, 87, 94, 106, 115, 116, 129, 130, 138, 144, 147)
- Writing Exercise Six (due Mar 14): In one sense the Sonnets can be thought of as a drama in which all the action happens offstage. Describe some aspect of their ‘plot’ (e.g.: how many characters are there? what are their relationships? what dramatic events give rise to the lyric content?). How important is an understanding of this plot to an appreciation of the Sonnets?
Week Ten
Mar 14-18 Shakespeare, Sonnets
- Optional Exercise (for credit equal to one written essay, due Mar 28): either (a) memorize one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, or (b) write a Shakespearean sonnet; this may be on any topic, but must contain your name in some form, either overtly or covertly (in puns, anagrams, etc.).
Week Eleven
Mar 21-25 No Class – Spring Break
Week Twelve
Mar 28-Apr 1 Shakespeare, Sonnets, continued
- Homework: Read selected poems by Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Jonson, Herrick, Lovelace and Marvell (available here)
- Writing Exercise Seven (due Wednesday, Apr 6): For this paper your topic is open; you may write on any theme, scene, idea, image, or word in the poems in the packet. Remember that the more specific you are, the better your essay will be.
Week Thirteen
Apr 4-8 Seventeenth-century English poetry
- Homework: Read Milton, Paradise Lost, Books I and II
Week Fourteen
Apr 11-15 Paradise Lost, Books I-II
- Homework: Read Milton, Paradise Lost, Books III and IV
- Writing Exercise Eight (due Wednesday, Apr 20): Obviously Milton considered Satan to be evil, but many critics have pointed out that he also plays the role of the epic ‘hero’ of Paradise Lost. Find examples of how Milton makes this figure of absolute sin and horror sympathetic to the reader—how is Satan described? what does he do? Discuss whether or not we are meant to ‘admire’ some aspects of Satan’s character.
Week Fifteen
Apr 18-22 Paradise Lost, Book III-IV
- Homework: read Milton’s “Lycidas” (available here) and Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (available here)
- Writing Exercise Nine (due Wednesday, Apr 27): Notice that these two poems, while broadly about the same subject (death), are very different in tone, style, message, and attitude. Discuss some aspect of this difference.
Week Sixteen
Apr 25 Milton, “Lycidas”
Apr 27 Gray, “Elegy in a Country Churchyard”
(back to top)