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Course overview and aims

This course coversÌýone of the most innovative periods in English literary history, from 1520 to 1625. It is an era of remarkable inventiveness and experimentation and,Ìýbeyond producing Shakespeare (who has his own paper), flaunts an embarrassment of forms and genres: in poetry, sonnets, pastoral, epic romance, elegies, epyllia, and epigrams; in drama, Elizabethan revenge tragedy, Jacobean tragicomedy, domestic tragedy, city comedy, and masques; and in prose, utopian literature and travel writing, sermons and satires, scientific and philosophical writing, letters and diaries, rogue literature, the essay, romances, novellas, and proto-novels. Reflecting this range, the course is structured – through a combination of lectures and seminarsÌý– to give students the opportunity in the Autumn to study four major works in depth, andÌýa critical toolkit in the Spring to pursue their own interests more freely across the period's literary landscape.ÌýBy the end of the course, students should feel that they have developed substantial knowledge of the four Autumn set texts; have a good grasp on some of the period's other authors in their intellectual and historical contexts; and have increased their familiarity with some of the key topics and new critical approaches in Renaissance studies.

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Term 1 seminars and lectures

Autumn seminarsÌýaddress four set works whichÌýrepresent the period's four major genres, and which will be assessed in Section A of the summer exam. They are:

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1. Lyric poetry: Aemilia Lanyer, Isabella Whitney, Mary Sidney, Renaissance Women Poets

2.ÌýProse fiction: Sir Philip Sidney,ÌýThe Old Arcadia

3.ÌýEpic:ÌýEdmund Spenser,ÌýThe Faerie QueeneÌý(Book 3 only)

4.ÌýDrama:ÌýJohn Webster,ÌýThe Duchess of MalfiÌý

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Autumn lectures address these four set texts as well as major themes, genres, and contexts from the period as a whole, allowing students to understand how these works fit into the period’s literary and intellectual practices more broadly.

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Term 2 seminars and lectures

SpringÌýseminarsÌýoffer opportunities for lecturers to share their specialist interests, and for students to develop areas of personal expertise.ÌýThemes in recent years have included: Renaissance literature and the body; Renaissance doubt and scepticism; magic and the supernatural in the Renaissance; Renaissance literature and memory, subjectivity, and emotion; Renaissance law and literature; Renaissance prose experimentation. Spring lectures cover a range of authors in relation to a particular genre or topic, in roughly chronological order. Some of these lectures will relate to texts and critical approaches discussed in the Spring seminars; all of them will offer students readings in and critical inroads into the literature of the period 1520–1625. Topics and materials covered in Spring lectures and seminars will be assessed in Section B of the summer exam.

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Recommended Reading

A lecture listÌýspecifying the titles and running order of Autumn and Spring lectures is available on Moodle or from the convenor, along with aÌýgeneral reading listÌýwhich details recommended editions of the four set texts and offers suggestions for wider reading. Further recommended reading may be given in lectures and seminars too.