Schedule


Note: This schedule is very tentative and will probably change.
Please check for changes regularly. Last update: 29 October, 2009.

Week 1 25 Aug Introduction: The Beginnings of Literature in England
  27 Aug Bede, An Ecclesiastical History of the English People, pp. 35-50
Week 2 1 Sep Heaven, Hell, and Hall

The Wanderer, pp. 50-52
3 Sep The Dream of the Rood (Online)
Week 3 8 Sep Beowulf, pp. 57-83 (lines 1-1887)
10 Sep Beowulf (continued)
Week 4 15 Sep Beowulf, pp. 83-105 (lines 1888-3182)
17 Sep Furlough Day
Week 5 22 Sep Unassigned
24Sep The Norman Conquest and Beyond

Marie de France, Lanval, pp. 106-127
Week 6 29 Sep The Late Middle Ages

Geoffrey Chaucer, The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, pp. 214-235
1 Oct The General Prologue (continued)
Week 7 6 Oct Geoffrey Chaucer, The Miller's Tale, pp. 269-281
8 Oct The Miller's Tale (continued)
Week 8 13 Oct Review
15 Oct Furlough Day
Week 9 20 Oct Midterm
22 Oct

Introduction to the Renaissance

Please read the following texts:

  • Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sonnet 10 ("The long love that in my thought doth harbour") P. 550
  • Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey ("Love, that Doth Reign and Live within My Thought") P. 561
  • Elizabeth I ("To the Troops at Tilbury", "The Golden Speech") PP. 687-690
  • Christopher Marlowe ("The Passionate Shepherd to His Love") P. 749
  • Sir Walter Raleigh ("The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd") P. 719
Week 10 27 Oct Lyric Poetry and the Pastoral Ideal

Examine Hans Holbein's painting The Ambassadors and read the following texts (locate the page numbers in the Table of Contents):

  • Look for themes similar to those in The Amabassadors in the following sonnets by William Shakespeare: 18, 19, 55, 65, 128. The sonnets begin on p. 790.
  • Read Shakespeare's sonnets 129 and 138
29 Oct Renaissance Lyrics (continued)
Week 11 3 Nov

Please read the following texts:

  • John Donne, "The Flea" (p. 910), "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" (p. 911)
5 Nov Furlough Day
Week 12 10 Nov Class Cancelled for Conference
  12 Nov Furlough Day
Week 13
17 Nov Religion and Humanism

Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, pp. 736-737, 750-779
19 Nov Doctor Faustus (continued)
Week 14 24 Nov Milton, Paradise Lost, pp. 975-977, 996-1009 (Book 1)
26 Nov Thanksgiving -- No Class
Week 15 1 Dec Furlough Day
3 Dec Paradise Lost (continued)
Week 16 8 Dec The Restoration: New Perspectives on Morality
10 Dec Behn, Poems to be assigned in class
Rochester, Poems to be assigned in class
Finals Week    

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