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Academic Year 2000/2001


Poetry and Ideology in Early Modern England
ENGL 214 SP

Students may be unaccustomed to thinking about poetry, and in particular Elizabethan poetry, as ideological. This course will encourage its participants to do so in two ways. First, the forms of Elizabethan poetry will be viewed in relation to their social and political contexts of production; for example, Edmund Spenser's THE FAERIE QUEENE will be read in relation to the author's role in England's colonization of Ireland. Second, we will consider the process of selection and exclusion whereby the canon of Renaissance poetry itself comes to be constituted (a process that begins in the 16th century). In so doing, we will read several female, nonaristocratic poets who were until recently excluded from the canon. The ideology of the canon is not onl y a question of inclusion/exclusion, however, but of how we choose to read canonical authors and genres. We will discover that even the most "innocent" of genres, such as pastoral, are themselves deeply politicized. We will also examine more explicitly political genres such as satire, and the poetry of the city, as well as the poetry of the court.

MAJOR READINGS

Castiglione, THE BOOK OF THE COURTIER;
George Puttenham, THE ARTE OF ENGLISH POESIE;
Sir Philip Sidney, ASTROPHIL AND STELLA and THE DEFENCE OF POETRY;
Edmund Spenser, THE FAERIE QUEEN and THE VIEW OF THE PRESENT STATE OF IRELAND;
Shakespeare, SONNETS;
Lady Mary Wroth, PAMPHILIA AND AMPHILANTHUS

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Several short papers, class presentation and take-home exam.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS

This course counts toward the department's Pre-1800 requirement.

Unless preregistered students attend the first class meeting or communicate directly with the instructor prior to the first class, they will be dropped from the class list. NOTE: Students must still submit a completed Drop/Add form to the Registrar's Office.

COURSE FORMAT: Discussion

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL    Grading Mode: Graded   

Prerequisites: ENGL201 Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-26-2001


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