Unit name | Literature 1550-1740 |
---|---|
Unit code | ENGL10043 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | C/4 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
Unit director | Dr. Publicover |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | Department of English |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
1550 to 1740 saw an explosion of drama on the public stage, a vibrant poetic culture which included experiments in lyric, epic, and many other poetic forms, and innovative examples of prose fiction, travel-writing and life-writing. The period also witnessed religious upheavals, political, scientific and economic revolutions, and the establishment of England’s first colonies in the new world. It also saw the coming of age of the printing press, and an enormous surge in the production and consumption of literary manuscripts by ever more diverse readerships. This unit will introduce students to a selection of literature from this period, and reflect on its cultural and intellectual contexts. Writers may include: Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, Mary Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, John Donne, Walter Raleigh, Francis Bacon, Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson, Mary Wroth, John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Aphra Behn, William Wycherley, William Congreve, John Dryden, Mary Wortley Montagu, Anne Finch, Alexander Pope, and Jonathan Swift.
At the end of the unit a successful student will be able to:
3 x one-hour lectures and 1 x two-hour seminar weekly.
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (1602)
John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667)
Aphra Behn, The Rover (1677)
Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1714)
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
Michael Hattaway, ed., A New Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture, 2 vols (Blackwell Publishing, 2010)