English 301 Schedule
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” (available here)
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”
Week Three
Jan 24-28 Beowulf
- Homework: Read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
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.”
Week Five
Feb 7-11 Chaucer, “General Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales
- Homework: Read “The Knight’s Tale” and “The Miller’s Tale”
- Project One due February 14 (click here for topics)
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
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)
Week Ten
Mar 14-18 Shakespeare, Sonnets
- Homework: Read selected poems by Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Jonson, Herrick, Lovelace and Marvell (available here)
Week Eleven
Mar 21-25 No Class – Spring Break
- Project Two due March 28 (click here for topics)
Week Twelve
Mar 28-Apr 1 Shakespeare, Sonnets
- Homework: Read selected poems by Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Jonson, Herrick, Lovelace and Marvell (available here)
Week Thirteen
Apr 4-8 Seventeenth-century English poetry
- Homework: Read Milton, “Lycidas” (available here) and begin reading Paradise Lost, Books I and II
Week Fourteen
Apr 11 Milton, “Lycidas”
Apr 13-15 Paradise Lost, Book I-II
- Homework: Read Milton, Paradise Lost, Books III and IV
Week Fifteen
Apr 18-22 Paradise Lost, Book III-IV
Week Sixteen
Apr 25-27 Paradise Lost, Book III-IV continued.
- Project Three due April 25 (click here for topics)
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