English 10A-3 - Spring, 2012

Literatures in English I: to 1700

Class Information

Instructor: Elsky, Stephanie
CRN: 94386
Time: TR 1:40-3:00
Location: 108 Hoagland

Description

This course is designed to prepare majors for upper-division English courses and, as such, is reading and writing intensive. We will focus on both English and American literature before 1700, exploring developments in genre and literary form as they relate to questions of social and political configurations (including gender and sexuality; race and class; and monarchy, nation, and empire). In this period, writers struggled to define the two terms that make up this course title “Literature” and “English.” Could the English language be a literary one, on par with its Greek and Latin predecessors? What constituted the boundaries of the English nation, and how did England’s sense of itself change over time, especially as it expanded into the New World? We will read works that offer competing, sometimes contradictory answers or explorations of these questions. The goal of this course is to develop skills that will allow students to engage with the dynamic literature of a time period that might now seem distant to us. Participation in class discussion will be of paramount importance in this endeavor, but so too will a range of different types of writing assignments, including close reading, translations and imitations, explorations of material culture through the use of digital resources, and a final research project.

Grading

Essay #1 (Close Reading Assignment): 20%
Essay #2 (Research Assignment, including annotated bibliography): 30%
Short Research and Writing Assignments: 15%
Final Exam: 20%
Attendance and Participation: 15%

Texts

Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1, 8th Edition, Greenblatt
Account of Mary Rowlandson (Dover Edition), Rowlandson