English 10A - Spring, 2023

Literatures in English 1: to 1700

Class Information

Instructor: Connally, Kenneth
Time: MWF 10:00-10:50am
Location: 107 Cruess

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 and genres that reflect, address, and helped produce these changes. Topics we will consider include: the emergence of English as a language of literary production; English literature's interconnectedness with the literatures of France, Italy, and ancient Greece and Rome; religious conflict and upheaval; and evolving conceptualizations of race, gender, and sexuality. Development of skills in reading, discussing, and writing about literature will be of paramount importance. 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) developing strategies for interpreting literary texts through paying careful attention to language choices and formal features, or "close reading"; and 3) positioning your interpretation of a literary text in relation to other scholarship on it.

Grading

Quizzes: 10%
Midterm: 10%
Final Exam: 15%
Discussion Section Participation: 15%
Short Essays: 20%
Term Paper: 30%

Texts

As You Like It, William Shakespeare
The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors (10th ed., vol. 1), Stephen Greenblatt et al. (eds.)