Literatures in English I: to 1700
Class Information
Instructor: Werth, Tiffany Jo
Time: MWF 11:00-11:50
Location: 1330 Walker
GE Areas: Writing Experience
Description
Premodern England: Strangers, Familiars, and other Supernatural Encounters
The aim of this course is to introduce you to the strange, worldly- and other-worldly deep history of English literature to prepare you for advanced study. We will focus on literature written in English prior to 1700. Covering a wide range of texts?religious polemic, poetry, drama, travel narratives, and prose fiction?we will explore the ?strangeness? of premodern England: a world that is simultaneously familiar and unsettling in its difference from our own twenty-first century Pacific West Coast perspective. Religious reform, explosive mercantile growth, other-world contact, catastrophic disease, the persistent threat of the Islamic Ottoman empire, as well as new technologies such as the printing press and the telescope, transformed how people understood the world around them, how they lived, loved, died, and how they wrote. Of central importance as we read will be the development of the following skill set:
Critical Skill Objectives
? Close reading and analysis
? Reading and identifying premodern poetic and prose forms
? Effectively researching in a range of historical databases
? Summarizing and critiquing secondary criticism
? Forming logically coherent arguments in response to given research topics
? Identifying, summarizing, and interpreting the formal and cultural significance of textual passages
Grading
Course Requirements:
Weekly Engagement Questions 20%
In Lecture 10%
In Tutorial 10%
Lecture Comprehension Quizzes 10%
(10 weekly quizzes with lowest score dropped)
Literary Term & Close Reading Essay
(3-4 pp) 20%
Critical Research essay (6-8 pp) 30%
Comprehensive Final Exam 20%
Wednesday December 7 3:30 PM PST ? 5:30 PM PST
Texts
I have put together a Broadway Press Custom Text for this course, that is available for purchase at the University Bookstore. I have designed this custom anthology to save you money and to target only necessary texts. It is available as an e-book.