This module explores a wide range of poetry, prose, and drama from the period 1500–1800, paying particular attention to the relationship between texts and their historical contexts.

The first semester provides an introduction to Renaissance Literature. Students will study some of the most celebrated texts of the sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, including the works of Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and George Herbert. There will be an emphasis on the ways in which writers of the Tudor and Stuart periods made use of fashionable literary forms (such as the sonnet, the allegorical epic, the city comedy and the pastoral hymn) and responded to their historical contexts (such as the Elizabethan and Jacobean courts, the Elizabethan stage and the religious and political controversies of the period). Throughout this part of the module we will consider the various means by which Renaissance authors strove to establish their own authority and legitimacy within the fertile but oppressive climate(s) of this era.

The second semester will focus on texts from 1660 through to 1800: 140 years that straddled the early modern period and the age of enlightenment. The rallying cry for this age of light was the Latin phrase sapere aude, meaning ‘dare to know’, and many of its greatest writers and thinkers challenged the boundaries of religious, philosophical, literary, and scientific thought. This period ushered in the modern world, and, for Britain, it was an age of expanding empire; new freedoms (the return of the theatre, religious toleration, freedom of the press, the fight for the abolition of slavery); new institutions (the Royal Society; the British Museum, the Bank of England and the first economic crash); new ways of thinking about the world and the role of the individual (empiricism, liberalism, gender equality); and even new forms of literature (newspapers, novels, gothic fiction). Our authors range from the rebellious and revolutionary to the satirical and sentimental, but all of them sought to understand the role of the individual in society. Our course will analyse the expressive means through which each of these writers ‘dared to know’ the self and others, but also explore the rapidly evolving world of professional authorship and literary production that helped to shape the works they produced. This half of the module will explore a diverse range of texts from 1660-1800; including, but not restricted to: John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1674), Alexander Pope’s ‘The Rape of the Lock’ (1712), and the revolutionary political tracts from Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Particular emphasis will be placed on the importance of context and the literary text.

• demonstrate an awareness of some of the key literary texts and contexts of the period, and be able to discuss significant themes, tropes, and discourses.

analyse the literature of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries with critical skill, theoretical understanding, and a sense of historical

This module will be taught across the year, with one lecture per week and a fortnightly seminar alternating with the other Year One module taught in the same timetable group. Where lectures are supplemented with handouts or Powerpoint presentations, these are usually made available to students on Learning Central at least 24 hours before the session.

The particular skills of the module bear upon reading and understanding context and literary texts. This requires careful scholarship, sensitivity to language and historical awareness. Employability skills include the ability to synthesise information, operating in group-based discussion involving negotiating ideas and producing clear, informed arguments in a professional manner.

The first part of the module is assessed by an assessed essay. The second part is assessed by an exam in which there will be two questions: 1) a close reading of a given text (a number of excerpts will be provided; 2) essay response (again, a number of questions will be provided and students will be asked to compare and contrast at least two texts from the course.)

This module is assessed according to the Marking Criteria set out in the English Literature Course Guide. There are otherwise no academic or competence standards which limit the availability of adjustments or alternative assessments for students with disabilities.

Autumn

All texts studied on the first part of the module are contained in a published anthology.

Lecture schedule for first half of the module: The first lecture on each text will concentrate on style, the second on themes. Please bring your Norton Anthology to all lectures in the first semester.

Week 1           How to read an early modern poem (poems by Marlowe, Raleigh, and Donne: Norton, pp. 1126, 1024, and 1384)

Weeks 2-3      Sonnet – Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella (Norton pp. 1084-1102)

Weeks 4-5      Romance and allegory – Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, book 1, cantos 1-5 (Norton, pp. 781-843)

Week 6                        Reading week

Weeks 7-8      Tragedy – Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus (Norton, pp. 1128-63)

Week 9           Epigram and satire – Ben Jonson, from Epigrams, Underwood &The Forest (Norton, pp. 1539-58)

Weeks 10-11   Religious lyric – George Herbert, The Temple (Norton, pp. 1707-1725)

Spring

The main readings for the second part of the module are contained in a published anthology and two additional texts, with some supplementary reading on Learning Central. Students should contact the module leader as early as possible if they will require readings in an alternative format.

Lecture schedule for second half of the module:

1. Introduction –An age of enlightenment (1660-1800)
2. Religion in the seventeenth century - John Milton: Paradise Lost, Book 1,2  (1667; 1674)
3. Religion in the seventeenth century - John Milton: Paradise Lost, Book 2, 4 (1667; 1674)
4. Sex and the City:  Restoration Drama - Aphra Behn, The Rover (1677)
5. Sex and the City:  Restoration Drama - Aphra Behn, The Rover (1677)
6. Reading Week
7. Satire and Scandals - Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1714)
8. Satire and Scandals  - Jonathan Swift, ‘The Lady’s Dressing Room’ (1732) [available on Learning Central]; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ‘The Reason that Induced Dr S to Write a Poem Called the Lady’s Dressing Room’ (1732-4)
9. Escape to the country: Stephen Duck, from ‘The Thresher’s Labour’(1730); Mary Collier, ‘The Woman’s Labour’ (1739);
10. Escape to the country: Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Wrote in a Country Churchyard’ (1751)
11. Revolutionary Thought – Edmund Burke, from Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790); Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791); Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)

Course Texts:

Autumn

The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume B, the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries, 9^th Revised Edition, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (W.W. Norton and Co., 2012).

Spring

British Literature 1640 - 1789: An Anthology, 3rd Edition, ed. Robert DeMaria, Jr. (Blackwells, 2008)

Aphra Behn, The Rover and other Plays, ed. Jane Spencer (Oxford University Press, 2008)