ENGL-040-01 Gateway: Med &/or Ren Lit/Cult

Faculty:

Collins, Michael

Wickham-Crowley, Kelley

Fall 2008
Michael Collins

The course begins with a brief look (in translation) at some Anglo-Saxon literature, including the great heroic poem, Beowulf. It then goes on to propose that a profound change in the way men and women saw the world took place in Western Europe between 1200 and 1600. The course attempts to understand that change and its impact on the culture of the West through a study of the art and literature of the medieval and Renaissance worlds.


Spring 2009
Kelley Wickham-Crowley

In this Gateway course, we look at the Middle Ages through writings by medieval women and writings about them, considering the variety of cultures and cultural influences over the range of the Middle Ages. Literatures from Britain, Ireland, France, Germany, and Scandinavia are contextualized against and within cultural expectations of women under such influences as gender roles, religion, national identities, self-identity and mythology. Outside material on historical backgrounds and literary criticism from multiple perspectives supplements the literature read. Active participation and keeping up with assignments is expected and is part of your grade. You write two longer papers and four shorter response papers, with a creative project due for a class party/medieval feast.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

Course syllabi
The following syllabi may help you learn more about this course (login required):

Spring '09: Wickham-Crowley, K (file download)

Additional syllabi may be available in prior academic years.

ENGL-040-02 Gateway: Med &/or Ren Lit/Cult

Petersen, Kevin

Versions of History in the English Renaissance

The past is unpredictable and always in a process of reevaluation. This course will look at how imaginative literature from the 16th and 17th centuries made use of and/or revised versions of the past. During the 16th century's massive religious revolutions "official" histories competed vehemently to establish the truth and foundation of either the Catholic or Protestant faith. Histories were also used to advocate for alternative modes of government with varying degrees of citizen participation. We will read a variety of literary texts, including excerpts from historical texts which announce that to anticipate the future we must know the past. We will ask broadly how is the past used and how does the author imagine the past to connect to the present. We will also be able to chart how that past is revised to suit particular political and religious needs in a variety of literary texts written during our period.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

ENGL-040-03 Gateway: Med &/or Ren Lit/Cult

Kelley Wickham-Crowley, Kevin Petersen

Fall 2008
Kelley Wickham-Crowley

In this Gateway course, we look at the Middle Ages through writings by medieval women and writings about them, considering the variety of cultures and cultural influences over the range of the Middle Ages. Literatures from Britain, Ireland, France, Germany, and Scandinavia are contextualized against and within cultural expectations of women under such influences as gender roles, religion, national identities, self-identity and mythology. Outside material on historical backgrounds and literary criticism from multiple perspectives supplements the literature read. Active participation and keeping up with assignments is expected and is part of your grade. You write two longer papers and four shorter response papers, with a creative project due for a class party/medieval feast.

Spring 2009
Kevin Petersen

Versions of History in the English Renaissance

The past is unpredictable and always in a process of reevaluation. This course will look at how imaginative literature from the 16th and 17th centuries made use of and/or revised versions of the past. During the 16th century's massive religious revolutions "official" histories competed vehemently to establish the truth and foundation of either the Catholic or Protestant faith. Histories were also used to advocate for alternative modes of government with varying degrees of citizen participation. We will read a variety of literary texts, including excerpts from historical texts which announce that to anticipate the future we must know the past. We will ask broadly how is the past used and how does the author imagine the past to connect to the present. We will also be able to chart how that past is revised to suit particular political and religious needs in a variety of literary texts written during our period.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

ENGL-040-04 Gateway: Med &/or Ren Lit/Cult

Faculty:

Barnett, Mary Jane

Yiu, Mimi

Fall 2008
Mimi Yiu

Women and the Market in Early Modern England

How did an emerging capitalist economy affect women in 16th and 17th century England? In a time of imperial expansion, global trade, and rapid urbanization, gender roles necessarily shifted as women entered the merchant class and became more than just commodities to be traded between men. Drawing upon cultural artifacts such as maps, visual representations, and household objects, this course examines the conflicts raised by women's increasing agency within the marital, literary, theatrical, commercial, and political economies. Through a close analysis of plays by Shakespeare and other male playwrights as well as poetry and prose by women, we will explore diverse representations of gender to ask how women's voices can acquire value in a patriarchal society. Critical essays, short journal entries, and active participation are required.


Spring 2009
Mary Jane Barnett

“Crying Like an Oyster Wife”: Revenge Tragedy and Social Violation

Revenge plays such as The Spanish Tragedy, Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, The Revenger’s Tragedy, and The Duchess of Malfi share a fascination for bloody murder and lurid, even incestuous desire. But what else do they have in common besides these notorious themes and a certain literary awareness of one another? I would propose that these plays also frame the values of Renaissance English culture by making “spectacular” (in the most literal sense of the word) the most profoundly imagined violations of those values. In other words, these revenge plays show Elizabethan and Jacobean culture from the inside out: desire, celebrated in Renaissance love poetry, becomes rape or incest; censorship, accepted as the social limits of speech and behavior, becomes murder or dismemberment; and political order, the hierarchical backbone of Renaissance society is finally shown to be an ideal beyond restoration. These five plays will provide the bloody backbone of the course, but a few other, shorter readings will also be required, including some secondary material, a little of Machiavelli’s Prince, and “On Truth,” an essay by Francis Bacon, in which Pilate, like the Jacobean revenge play, “would not stay for an answer.” Students will be asked to write four or five very short response papers of two pages each and one longer paper. A final exam is also probable but not definite.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

Other academic years
There is information about this course number in other academic years:

• 2005-2006 Fall and Spring
• 2006-2007 Fall and Spring
• 2007-2008 Fall and Spring
• 2009-2010 Fall and Spring
• 2010-2011 Fall and Spring
• 2011-2012 Fall and Spring
• 2013-2014 Fall and Spring

More information
Look for this course in the schedule of classes.

The academic department web site for this program may provide other details about this course.