Studies in British Literature: Early English through the Renaissance

All second-year English literature courses share the following features:

1. Students are presumed to be proficient in the writing of critical essays on literary subjects.
2. Students are required to read in the course subject area beyond the texts assigned by the instructor or discussed in class.
3. Students are required to incorporate into their oral and written coursework secondary source materials. These may include autobiographical or biographical material; literary criticism or theory; unassigned texts by the author under study; relevant cultural or intellectual history; or other arts, such as music, film, or fine arts.
4. Readings and topics will vary with each instructor’s presentation of a course; however, all course materials are consistent with the objectives/outcomes for this course.

 In English 2316, students will examine

1. the development of early English story-telling culture, from an oral to a literary one;
2. the evolution of over-arching ideas and themes (such as the nature of the hero, the roles and depictions of women, the ideals of kingship and the rise of humanism) in the literature of these centuries;   
3. the evolution of the English language as reflected in the literature of these centuries. 

Sample reading list

 The syllabus for 2116 will typically draw from the following works:  

• “Caedmon’s Hymn”*
•  Beowulf*
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight*
• Selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
• Selections from Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love
• Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, Books 7 and 8
• Everyman
• Selections of Tudor and Elizabethan lyric poetry, letters and/or essays
• A Shakespeare play
• Donne, selected poems and meditations
• Milton, selected sonnets and books of Paradise Lost 

*These works available in modern English translation.