English 533

Renaissance Texts/Renaissance Theory

Prof. Charles Ross

Fall 2006

MWF 3:30

 

Texts:

Sidney, Philip. The Old Arcadia. Oxford World’s Classics.

Sidney, Philip. The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia. Penguin.

Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene. Ed. A. C. Hamilton. Longman’s.

Elizabethan Prose Fiction.

 

Portfolio assignments (4 pages each):

 

A. Write on one of the following:

 

  1. Compare any character in Sidney’s Arcadia with any character in The Faerie Queene. What can you conclude about the interest of the authors in developing character, speech, or individual ethos?
  2. When Sidney wrote the Arcadia, he had been rusticated by Queen Elizabeth, and his sister Mary was sixteen and pregnant by her forty-six year old husband. In what ways might the Arcadia have been influenced by Sidney’s life’s experience?
  3. According to Sidney’s Defense, the end of poetry is to induce readers to virtuous action, yet the heroes of the Arcadia are not always admirable. How do you reconcile Sidney’s theory with his art?

 

B. Write on one of the following:

 

  1. Does Shakespeare’s interest in time add anything to the theme of despair that his sonnets share with those of Sidney and Spenser?
  2. Compare and contrast images of moisture in Marlowe’s “Hero and Leander” and either “Venus and Adonis” or “The Rape of Lucrece.”

 

Research Paper:

 

Write a research paper on any work of sixteenth-century non-dramatic literature. 15 pages.

 

Final Exam:

 

1) Discuss the presence or absence of moral action in Elizabethan prose fiction.

2) Weigh the relative important of story and style in the development of English poetry.

 

There will be a field trip to Chicago on September 30 for the Romance and Epic seminar at the Newberry Library. All expenses paid.

 

Week

Date

Topic

1

21-Aug

Introduction

Prose

 

 

23-Aug

More—Utopia Preface, book 1

 

25-Aug

More—Utopia book 2

2

28-Aug

Erasmus—Praise of Folly

 

30-Aug

Critical Theory: Elyot, Wilson, Gosson, Lodge

Sidney

 

 

1-Sept

Sidney, Defense of Poetry

3

4-Sept.

No class

 

6-Sept.

Sidney: Old Arcadia 1

 

8-Sept.

Sidney: Old Arcadia 2

4

11-Sept.

Sidney: Old Arcadia 3

 

13-Sept.

Sidney: Old Arcadia 4

 

15-Sept.

Sidney: Old Arcadia 5

5

18-Sept.

Sidney: New Arcadia 1  Outline of the New Arcadia

 

20-Sept.

Sidney: New Arcadia 1  Family Trees in the Arcadia

 

22-Sept.

Sidney: New Arcadia 2

6

25-Sept.

Sidney: New Arcadia 3

Poetry

 

 

 

27-Sept.

Wyatt and Surrey (Tottel’s Miscellany)

 

29-Sept.

Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar

7

2-Oct.

No Class

 

4-Oct.

Spenser: Amoretti and Epithalamion

 

6-Oct.

Sidney: Astrophel and Stella

8

9-Oct.

No Class

 

11-Oct.

Shakespeare: Sonnets

 

13-Oct.

Barnfield, Daniel, Drayton, Marston, Davies

9

16-Oct.

Aemelia Lanyer

Spenser

 

 

 

18-Oct.

Faerie Queene 1.1-3

 

20-Oct.

FQ 1.4-6

10

23-Oct.

FQ 1.7-12 (Despair)

 

25-Oct.

FQ 3.1-4

 

27-Oct.

FQ 3.5-8

11

30-Oct.

FQ 3.9-12

 

1-Nov

Marlowe, “Hero and Leander”

 

3-Nov.

Shakespeare, “Venus and Adonis”

12

6-Nov.

Shakespeare, “The Rape of Lucrece”

 

8-Nov.

FQ 6.1-4

 

10-Nov.

FQ 6.5-8

13

13-Nov.

FQ 6.9.12

Prose Fiction

 

 

15-Nov.

Gascoigne, “Master F. J.”

 

17-Nov.

Lyly, Euphues

 

20-Nov.

Nashe, “The Unfortunate Traveler”

Translation

14

27-Nov.

Bible translations

 

29-Nov.

Surrey, Phaer, Stanyhurst, Douglas: Virgil’s Aeneid

 

31-Nov.

Marlowe: Lucan’s Pharsalia

15

4-Dec.

Florio: Montaigne’s Essays

 

6-Dec.

Harington’s Preface to Orlando Furioso

 

8-Dec.

Richard Hakluyt

 


 

Suggested Bibliography

 

Burckhardt, Jacob, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.

Chambers, R. W. Thomas More.

Lewis, C. S. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century.

Lewis, C. S. The Allegory of Love.

Mattingly, Garrett. The Armada.

Neale, J. E. Queen Elizabeth I.

Parker, Patricia. Literary Fat Ladies

Ringler, William. Stephen Gosson.

Rowse, A. L. The Elizabethan Renaissance.

Seehohm, Frederick. The Oxford Reformers.

Stone, Lawrence. The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641.

Wallace, Malcolm William. The Life of Sir Philip Sidney.

Ward, A. W. The Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. 3.

Abrams, et. Al. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1

Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare