English 246 - Winter, 2014

17th Century Literature

Class Information

Instructor: Dolan, Frances
CRN: 84147
Time: T 12:10-3:00
Location: 248 Voorhies
Breadth: Earlier British
Focus: Interdiscipline, Method

Description

This seminar will introduce students to seventeenth-century agricultural writing, some theoretical and historical perspectives on agricultural practices and discourses drawn from the Environmental Humanities reading list, and key works in early modern environmental history and ecocriticism. Central concerns for us, as for seventeenth-century writers, will include enclosure and the idea of the common, soil amendment, crop rotation, hedgerow planting, and the relationship between native and outlandish plants. We will settle down to sustained readings of Margaret Cavendish’s poetry and prose (rather than her more often studied plays), Bacon's New Atlantis, and parts of Milton’s Paradise Lost, exploring the ways that these texts engaged debates and innovations in agriculture.

Grading

Students will complete some short research and writing assignments and a final research paper.

Texts

Course readings via Smartsite
Teskey, Gordon, ed., Paradise Lost: Norton Critical edition (but others acceptable)
Bowerbank and Mendelson, eds., Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader
Thomas, Keith, Man and the Natural World