English 246 - Winter, 2012

17th Century Literature

Class Information

Instructor: Friedlander, Robert
CRN: 53873
Time: M 12:10-3:00
Location: 120 Voorhies
Breadth: Earlier British
Focus: Interdiscipline, Theory

Description

Rogue Sexualities in Early Modern England

In this class, we will explore the criminalization of sex and the sexualization of crime in early modern England. We will read popular pamphlets, poetry and drama alongside legal and religious texts that all link excessive sexuality to illegal behavior – particularly to the brand of social outcast known as “the rogue.” Rogues (a category encompassing vagrants, criminals, and prostitutes) were objects of fascination to early modern writers – simultaneously feared and admired because of their perceived freedom from sexual mores. Yet, the struggle to control sexual lust was understood to be a universal experience, even and especially among the settled, the married, and the religious. The rogue’s excessive sexuality thus functioned as a potential discursive site for identification across social differences and across the divide between licit and illicit sexuality.

Over the semester we will examine the remarkable flexibility of rogue sexuality as an ideological category, including its influence on the way early modern England imagined the country and the city, the court and the nation, masculinity and femininity, and promiscuity and marriage. The course trajectory reverses the usual movement from order to disorder by beginning with the promiscuous underworld and ending with Edenic marriage. In reading transgression “backwards” we will question our own understanding of the relationship between sexual and social order and disorder, replacing a rigid binary comprehension of these terms with a more fluid and often unstable dialectical model.

Grading

Expectations and Requirements:

- Thorough reading and preparation for seminar discussion
- A shorter paper of 5-7 pages, precirculated electronically for discussion on the seminar
- A five-minute (max.) oral response to a colleague’s pre-circulated paper
- A final paper of about 20 pages that contributes substantially to the critical conversation in the field

Texts

Henry IV, Part I, Shakespeare
Measure for Measure, Shakespeare
King Lear, Shakespeare
The Roaring Girl, Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker
The Unfortunate Traveller, Thomas Nashe
Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdy Beggars, ed. Arthur Kinney
Paradise Lost, John Milton
The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction, Michel Foucault