12-163
Renaissance Literature in England
Spring Semester 2000 MWF 2
Brother Anthony (An Sonjae)

This course will introduce students to works by some of the major writers of poetry and prose in the English Renaissance (1500 - 1700).
 
Mid-term Exam

I will give you the text of 6 sonnets (2 by Sidney, 4 by Shakespeare) and ask you to explain and compare 2 of them. The 'explanation' should include a structural analysis and a thematic explanation. I have decided not to ask detailed 'knowledge' questions on background, as I first thought. There will be no 'fill in the blanks' questions.

The basic textbooks will be Volume I of The Norton Anthology of English Literature (6th edition), Brother Anthony's Literature in English Society : Volume 2, The Renaissance (Sogang University Press, 1998) and the Norton critical edition of More's Utopia. For online materials see Brother Anthony's list of Renaissance Resources.

Classes on Mondays and Wednesdays will be lectures, the Friday class will usually be small-group  discussions and presentations. All lectures and class presentations will be given in English.


Assignments:
 
Scrapbooks / Home Pages

Students will prepare scrapbooks or Home Pages on the following topics:
1. The Renaissance : painting, architecture, printing, discovery, society...
2. The Age of Elizabeth : Shakespeare, architecture, music, costumes
3. The Civil War, the Commonwealth, the Restoration : social transformations, the death of Charles, the beginning of modern England
Each section should combine pictures with short explanatory texts. The source of each picture should be indicated. To avoid misunderstandings, please note that any portions of text downloaded from the Web must be clearly indicated as such, with the source. 
Reports

At the start of the 4th week, each student will submit a short paper on Utopia.
At the start of the 8th week, each student will submit a paper on Shakespeare's Sonnets.
At the end of the Final Exams, each student will submit a 6-page research-paper about one major writer.
To avoid misunderstandings, please note that any portions of text downloaded from the Web, or copied from a book, must be clearly indicated as such, with the source. 

Class Schedule

(The Page Numbers refer to Br. Anthony's book)

Week 1: Pages 1 - 10 General Introduction.  (No class Wednesday)
Week 2: Pages 12 - 21 More's Utopia Books 1 & 2
                The causes of crime and the possibility of giving advice to Princes. Voices and models.
Week 3: More's Utopia Book 2
                The life of the individual and the strategies of the State. Ideals and limitations.
Week 4: Pages 61 & 75-79  Spenser: Epithalamium;
            Pages 86-7, 90-99  Sidney: Astrophel and Stella, Defense of Poesy.
                The varieties of love and their poetic representations.
Week 5: Pages 29-39 Early court poetry: Wyatt, Surrey.
            Pages 149-162  Elizabethan lyric verse : Campion, Daniel, Drayton, etc.
                The combination of poetry and music. Art and nature.
Week 6: Pages 145-8 Shakespeare's Sonnets (No class Wednesday)
                Love and its oppositions.
Week 7: Midterm Exams
Week 8: Pages 189-205 Donne: Secular poems (No class Good Friday)
             The male's responses to the female. Emotion and epigram.
Week 9: Pages 207-211 Donne: Secular & Religious poems
                The human confronts Death and God.
Week 10: Pages 213-4, 223-234 Jonson: Poems (no class Friday)
                How unlike Donne? Perfect art? Self-imaging?
Week 11: Page 253-285 Herbert, Herrick, the Cavalier poets
                The end of the traditional lyric?
Week 12: (40th Anniversary week) Pages 331-355 Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, Hobbes
                The birthplace of the Modern?
Week 13:Pages 294-301 Marvell
Week 14: Pages 303-313 Milton's early works
                The end of the Renaissance, the start of Romanticism?
Week 15: Pages 313-325 Milton: Paradise Lost, Books 1 & 9 (last section)
                Satan as hero, human perfection.
Week 16: Exams


Grading : Reports and Exams (midterm and final) will have equal value. Scrapbooks will each be worth one third of a Report.

If you have questions you may write to Brother Anthony or visit him in his office (X109)