Paper III: English Literature 1

This course covers a sizeable period of English literary history, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, through selected texts, background readings and topics. The range of texts and contexts covered is also vast. Several of the selected texts represent the formation and consolidation of distinctive generic and literary styles within an English Renaissance context.

A selection from Middle English literature presents students with the challenge of working with an unfamiliar language, a complex narrative mode and a concentration of competing/interconnected discourses in the late medieval English context.

The selection of lyric poetry from late sixteenth century England requires students to read beyond the selected texts in order to trace the development of the courtly love tradition and the sonnet form, etc, from their continental context to their new expressions in an Elizabethan context.

Similarly, the selections from late sixteenth century English drama require students to be able to trace the development of English Renaissance drama, its distinctive features/ generic modes (popular/erudite, tragedy, comedy), its contexts and conditions of staging (censorship, cross-dressing, etc). Centrally, this course requires students to connect important strains within the European Renaissance and Reformation (humanism, Calvinism, etc) with forms of literary expression and literary discourse, within changing historical and material conditions.