[WesMaps 98/99 Home Page] [Course Search] [Course Search by CID]


ENGL214

Poetry and Ideology in Early Modern England
ENGL214 FA

Not Currently Offered

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 only a question of inclusion/exclusion, however, but of how we choose to read canonical authors and genres to exclude the social and political field, 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

Exam which includes essays.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS

This course counts toward the department's Pre-1800 historical knowledge requirements.

COURSE FORMAT: Lecture Seminar

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UG Credit: 1.00 Gen Ed Area & Dept: HA ENGL

Prerequisites: ENGL201

Last Updated on MAR-22-1999




Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions.

Copyright Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459