ENG 223-01 - The Tradition of English Lit I (Spring)

4 credits

Centuries of Revolution. This course is an introduction to the major texts and dominant issues defining the English culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. We will read texts from this broad historical range, by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton, as individual artistic masterpieces, but also as important interventions in the religious, political, and scientific revolutions of the time. Our understanding of the period will be defined by four central cultural issues: the rise of the idea of the English nation, the influence of Humanist rhetoric and education on English literary culture, the Protestant Reformation and the creation of the Anglican Church, and the development of the empirical scientific method. The course will conclude with an analysis of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, written in the aftermath of the tumultuous English Civil War, as the culmination of the four themes covered in the class. Throughout the course, we will focus on how literary texts decisively intervened in broad cultural debates during a time of unprecedented religious, political, and scientific upheaval. The course will be centered around class discussion and close reading of assigned texts. Our work will focus on clear writing and logical argumentation.

Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or any course in the study of literature in another language department.
Instructor: Arner, Lee