12-455 Renaissance Poetry
Brother Anthony (An Sonjae)
Graduate School Spring Semester 2002
Tuesday 2-5pm

This course will introduce students to works by some of the major poets of the English Renaissance (1500 - 1660).


The basic textbooks will be Volume I of The Norton Anthology of English Literature (7th edition) and Brother Anthony's Literature in English Society: Volume 2, The Renaissance (Sogang University Press)

Reference should also be made to :

Gary Waller, English Poetry of the 16th Century (Longman)
George Parfitt, English Poetry of the 17th Century (Longman)
Thomas N. Corns ed., The Cambridge Companion: Donne to Marvell
David Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance

See also links in Brother Anthony's home page


Week 1: General Introduction
What are the main historical, cultural and political features of the period that influence its poetry? Characterize Elizabethan and Jacobean styles in the visual arts.
Week 2: Thomas More: Utopia
What is meant by terming this work a "Lucianic" satire?
Week 3: Wyatt, Surrey and the European Renaissance
What literary traditions do writers model themselves on? A survey of the main European writers of the period.
Week 4: Spenser: Shepherd's Calendar. Epithalamium.
In what ways do the formal aspects of these works affect their interpretation?
Week 5: Spenser: The Faerie Queene Book 1
What does Spenser mean by 'Holiness'? Where did he derive the concept from?
Week 6: Sidney: Astrophel and Stella. Defense of Poesy.
Explain the possible relationship between these two works. Explore the main themes of A&S. What attitudes to woman does it embody?
Week 7: Elizabethan lyrics, Campion, Daniel and Drayton, Marlowe: Hero and Leander
Comment on the influence of Ovid and the Elizabethan sense of artistic beauty.
Week 8: Shakespeare: Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, Sonnets
Week 9: Donne: Secular poems
Week 10: Donne: Religious poems
Week 11: Jonson: The Forest
Week 12: George Herbert
Week 13: Milton's early works (before 1640)
Week 14: Herrick, Carew, Suckling, Lovelace, Waller, Denham, Cowley
Week 15: Prose: Bacon, Browne, Burton, Hobbes.

A number of students will prepare presentations each week from week 4.
Two research papers will be written: the first (due in Week 10) will discuss works of one Elizabethan poet. The second will be an in-depth comparative study of two of the poets studied in weeks 9 - 13.