Schedule
Tue-Thu, 12:30 PM - 1:45 PM (1/13/2010 - 5/7/2010) Location: WISE ZEHMR 109
Tue-Thu, 12:30 PM - 1:45 PM (1/13/2010 - 1/22/2010) Location: WISE ZEHMR 225
Description
The sixteenth century comprises a crucial period in English political, cultural, and religious history. This period saw the emergence of England as a world power, the formation of a distinct brand of English Protestantism, and the transmission and flowering of continental humanism. The literary productions of the period both reflect and helped shape these complex developments. This course will focus on major English?and a few continental writers?including More, Erasmus, Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare. The first third of the course examines on the early modern court and the range of literary responses that it engendered. The middle third explores literary responses to the English Reformation. The final month is devoted to the study of particular poetic theories and forms (with particular emphasis on the sonnet sequence). We will read and discuss these sixteenth-century texts with two main goals in mind: a) to introduce students to the historical, philosophical, and aesthetic cu