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1
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Week 1: Introduction to British Literature and History (On-Demand)
In Week 1, we study the foundations of English literature, how Britain will be discussed in relation to English literature, and where the history begins. English literature’s pre-history, from myth to classical literature, will also be discussed.
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2
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Week 2: Beowulf, the Epic, and the End of Anglo-Saxon Heroism
In Week 2, the first English-language epic, Beowulf, will be provide the first full example of English literature’s beginnings. Discussions of Old English, the genre of the epic poem, Anglo-Saxon mythology, and the creation of the Beowulf manuscript in a medieval Christian context will follow.
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3
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Week 3: Geoffrey Chaucer, Mystery Plays, and Medieval Character
Week 3 concerns the major work of Middle English, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Character construction and vernacular literature feature as the focal points of this study of how Chaucer, inspired by Dante Alighieri, along with the mystery play genre before him, explore how literature can better represent the many character types living in medieval society.
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4
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Week 4: The Roots of the Renaissance and William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare’s poetry provides the axis in Week4 for studying how the writing of writers such as Shakespeare represent a new direction in culture, a direction we tend to characterize as “humanist thought”. Shakespeare’s Sonnets will help students to understand what literature’s role was in the English Renaissance and what makes a figure such as Shakespeare so influential.
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5
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Week 5: Contemporaries of Shakespeare: Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and Baroque Tragedy
Week 5 uses the well-known topic of Shakespeare’s contribution to baroque tragedy to discuss the role of theatre and its lively use of this genre to introduce other major figures in Renaissance-period British literature, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. Looking at a variety of plays, Week 5’scontent helps students to appreciate the drama and expressiveness of this new theatre culture.
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6
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Week 6: The Modern Epic of Edmund Spenser and The Faerie Queene
In Week 6, we return to the subject of the epic poem in order to study new directions emerging again in Renaissance Britain. The modern epic, at once parodic and experimental, highlights the role of literary knowledge and cultural education come to have in early modern Britain. Spenser’s unique creations, such as the Spenserian stanza and a new myth of Queen Elizabeth I, will also be studied.
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7
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Week 7: Metaphysics and the Expanding World: Donne, Herbert, Marvell
In the years during the time of Queen Elizabeth I and after, Britain confronted new worlds both real and transcendental. Week 7 visits the work of three major poets of the seventeenth century, John Donne, George Herbert, and Andrew Marvell, to provide students with examples of powerful lyrical poems that probe the human mind to reaches beyond those imagined by earlier Renaissance writers during a time when British society was making greater contact with the world outside Europe.
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8
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Week 8: John Milton: Politics and Poetic Vision
Britain’s greatest political poet, John Milton, will provide the lens in Week 8 for understanding cultural tensions between democracy and monarchy, and vision and political thought. Milton’s own direct influence on the concept of the modern republic, Oliver Cromwell’s government, and living in a decadent age under King Charles II will be highlighted.
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9
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Week 9: The Prose Revolution and Eighteenth Century Novels
Excerpts from Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels provide the basis for an introduction to the beginnings of the novel in English literary history in Week 9. Both Defoe and Swift sought to write intimately and informatively about the social problems of their age and therefore found prose to be the best way to describe those issues in detail. Defoe’s journalism and Swift’s satirical qualities will be particular focal points of Week 9’s content.
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10
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Week 10: Presentations week
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11
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Week 11: The Gothic Churchyard: Visions of Romanticism
Edward Young’s famous long poem “Night Thoughts” orients Week 11’s introduction to the Graveyard Poets and their special use of neo-classical poetry and their contributions to trends that would become Romantic poetry. Young’s exploration of the secrets of the imagination is particularly important for understanding where the interest in studying the human imagination in great detail comes from in English literature. Week 11 will involve exploring Romantic poet William Blake’s stunning illustrated version of “Night Thoughts” to help students appreciate how imagination’s darker realm becomes a key subject of many writers of the period.
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12
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Week 12: Romanticism’s Innocence and Experience: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge
Week 12 introduces the most fundamental Romantic poets in English literature and their reflection of trends in thought during this time of Revolutions. William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge each in distinct ways conveys a renewed interest in the concept of innocence as a model for society’s rebirth. Poems by these three figures will help students to explore the varied nuances of the shared use of symbols of innocence in Romanticism.
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13
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Week 13: Romantic Adventures into the Unknown
Week 13 involves studying Romantic poets for whom travel is a central concern poetically and existentially. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias”, and excerpts from John Keats’s “The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream” and Lord Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” encourage students to understand how other worlds became the centre of new directions in the British imagination in the early nineteenth century. These more extreme Romantic poets provide a sense of abandonment of tradition that will help English literature to move forward in this rapidly changing time.
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14
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Week 14: Toward Victorianism: Jane Austen
Jane Austen’s careful studies of Regency-era life in Britain will orient Week 14’s concluding lecture on beginnings of various forms and attitudes in English literature. Austen’s work, considered in this class using excerpts from Pride and Prejudice, foreshadows many of the concerns about a modern English identity that emerge in the Victorian era. Austen’s forward-looking social narratives will give students an exciting and colourful experience of the details of English life following the sharp eye of this popular author.
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15
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Week 15: Revision
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| 事前学習/Preparation |
Students should read and reread class readings assigned in class and prepare to answer questions assigned in prior lessons. |
| 事後学習/Reviewing |
Critical thinking questions and creative tasks are posed each week in this course. Students should use these questions and tasks to orient their revision of class texts, along with engaging in wider reading, in preparation for longer responses to class texts in the form of assignments. |
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