English 10A-1 - Winter, 2014

Literatures in English I: to 1700

Class Information

Instructor: Nelson, Teresa
CRN: 62509
Time: MWF 9:00-9:50
Location: 163 Olson

Description

The aim of this course is to prepare you for advanced study in English literature. Our focus will be literature written in English before 1700, a period of fascinating historical, political, social, and linguistic transformation. We will read texts from a range of authors that both reflect and helped produce these changes. Topics we will consider include: religious reformation and controversy; national identity and England’s relationship to the new world; the status of the monarchy during periods of political growth and unrest; and women’s participation in the literary world. Of paramount importance will be students’ development of skills in reading, discussing, and writing about the literature. Specifically, we will work on three kinds of skills: (1) seeing a big picture by spanning time and surveying the globe to track the emergence, development, and dissemination of the English language and its literatures; (2) focusing carefully on key literary texts and some strategies for interpreting them, or “close reading,” of poetry, prose, and drama; and (3) positioning your interpretation of a literary text in relation to other scholarship on it.

Grading

Attendance and Participation: 10%
Quizzes and Short Writing Assignments: 10%
Close Reading Paper: 20%
Research Paper: 30%
Midterm: 15%
Final: 15%

Texts

The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1, 9th edition, split edition (A, B, and C), ISBN 978-0-393-91300-2
Or the single text edition, ISBN 978-0-393-92531-9
The Roaring Girl (Norton edition), ISBN 978-0-393-93277-5, Middleton and Dekker