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ENGL 202: Renaissance to Restoration: English Literature 1580-1688

Course Aims and Objectives:
The course will take us from the closing decades of the Tudor monarchy (1580-1603) to the episodes of power, revolution and restitution that characterised Stuart rule (1603-1688). During this time, English culture saw upheavals in politics that were accompanied by shifts in discourses of (among others) gender, religion, sex, science and education. ‘Renaissance to Restoration: English Literature 1580-1688’ will examine the literature of change in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from Spenser’s provocative Elizabethan verse epic The Faerie Queene, to the brilliant and edgy theatre of the likes of Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and Thomas Middleton, and the writings of revolutionaries like John Milton and monarchist libertines like Aphra Behn.

Our readings will mainly be focused on topics designed to provide us with ingress into the literature, culture and historical vitality of the period. To this end, the texts are gathered under four headings:  ‘Love, Sex and Death’, ‘Court, Country, City’, ‘Power and Politics’ and ‘Heaven and Hell’. We will be reading cross-sections from works by many authors to explore these themes from as many angles as possible. We will consider the continuities across a range of different primary texts but we will also be keen to observe and analyse differences. 

Assessment: 
1x 1,000-word in-class test as take-home essay (10%); 1 x 2,000-word essay (30%); 1 x 2.5 hours final examination (60%)

Submission Deadlines:
Take-home essay paper = to be handed in by 12 noon, Monday Week 9/Term 1
Essay = 12 noon, Monday Week 10/Term 2

Contact:
1 lecture, 1 seminar per week.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, successful students should have developed:

• a good knowledge of the literature of the period in its various types and genres, an understanding of significant kinds of connection and difference between texts, and a capacity to read these texts closely;
• an awareness of certain historical, political, literary and cultural issues of the period as they are manifested in the literary texts;
• independent critical responses and perspectives in general, and a capacity to make appropriate use of secondary material such as criticism and theory;
• their existing skills (both oral and written) in the analysis of ideas, presentation of arguments and well-expressed handling of complex issues.

Set texts (in order of use)

Term 1
*The Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth Century Verse and Prose (Broadview Press)
Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella [on Moodle]
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Books 1 and 2 [on Moodle]
Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World and Other Writings (Penguin)
Ben Jonson, The Alchemist (New Mermaids)
Thomas Middleton, Women Beware Women (Revels Student Editions)
Aphra Behn, Oroonoko and Other Writings (Oxford World Classics)

Term 2
In addition to The Broadview Anthology, which we will continue to use:
Christopher Marlowe, Edward II (New Mermaids)
John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. John Leonard (Penguin)
John Ford, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (New Mermaids)
For further reading, see the course Moodle site.

See the Moodle site on a weekly basis for seminar questions.

Lecturers: AGF = Prof Alison Findlay; HH = Dr Hilary Hinds; LH = Dr Liam Haydon; LOB = Dr Liz Oakley-Brown;

Lecture / Seminar Programme

Term 1

Term 2

Term 3

Back to: ENGL 201

Forward to: ENGL 203

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