Wilfrid Laurier University
EN245:
The English Literary Tradition I
LOCATION: Arts 1C18
TIME: T(R)14.30-15.50
SEMESTER: Fall 2015
Dr. Andrew Bretz
Office: 3-129 Woods
Office Hours: Tues. 1:00-2:00
Phone: 519-884-0710, ext. 4461
E-mail: abretz@wlu.ca
Skype Office Hours: By Appointment
Skype ID: andrewbretz
Twitter: @AndrewBretz001
Facebook ID: andrew.bretz
“We acknowledge that we are on the traditional territory of the Neutral,
Anishnawbe and Haudenosaunee peoples.”
Course Description
This is a course in literary history, tracing the English literary tradition from its very beginning,
with the Venerable Bede formulating the concept of Englishness, to the end of the Interregnum
in 1660. As such, we aren’t looking at one culture - one thing it is to be English and one thing it
is to be literature - but many different permutations of the concepts of Englishness and Literature
throughout history to 1660. Beginning with the Anglo-Saxon world, we will look in particular at
the tensions between pagan identity and Christian literature; then around the turn of the
millennium and especially following the rise of Middle English, we will turn to look at how the
European traditions influenced English literary production; and finally, in early modern English,
we will investigate the Renaissance sense of English self identity and literary production.
Throughout the course there will be special attention paid to the role of gender, sexuality, and
religion in the formation of both the English identity and the literary canon. Although there is
some prose, the majority of the texts on this course are either poetry or drama.
This course will be offered in a way that is designed to help students learn at their own
pace, on their own time. One class period per week (Tuesday) is devoted to exercises with the
text, including close reading exercises, research exercises, and writing exercises. The equivalent
of one class period per week is devoted to lecture materials. The lecture materials will not be
delivered in class, however. They will all be hosted online and will be mounted as soon as
possible. In order to accommodate the many different styles of learning in the student body, the
lecture materials will be a variety of text based lecture notes, audio files, and video files. You are
expected to have finished each lecture before coming to class on Tuesdays. If you do not finish
the lectures for that week, you will not get participation points for that week. (Please note, when
you are on My LearningSpace, you are always being tracked. I can see when you’ve read,
watched, or listened to the materials. Like AshleyMadison.com, My LearningSpace is far from
anonymous.) Please come to class prepared to discuss the text of the week and to investigate the
problems that were covered in the lecture materials. For your convenience, in the outline below,
class periods that are being replaced by online materials are shaded in grey.
Course Objectives
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
1. Identify the major the major authors, figures, and events of the medieval and Renaissance periods
in England
2. Describe and complicate the definitions of such basic concepts as (though not limited to):
a. Literature/Literary
b. Canon/Canon formation
c. Author/Authorship
d. Drama/Poetry/Prose
e. Medieval/Renaissance
3. Illustrate the literary history of the medieval and Renaissance periods through the use of a
timeline
4. Compose proficient scholarly prose in English at a university level
Required Texts:
Black, Joseph et al. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Concise Volume A (From the
Medieval Period to the Eighteenth Century. 2nd Ed. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2011. ISBN:
9781554810482
(Please note: This text will come to the university bookstore packaged with Broadview’s Twelfth Night.
If you do not wish to get the two packaged together, you are more than welcome to order the anthology
on its own and read Twelfth Night separately.)
Schedule
SEPTEMBER 2015
Sunday
6
Monday
7
Tuesday
8
Wednesday Thursday
9
10
Friday
11
Saturday
12
18
19
14.30-15.50 Arts
1C18
Introduction to
Course
13
14
15
16
17
14.30-15.50 Arts
1C18
Bede the
Venerable
pgs. 36-50
Bede Quiz Available Online
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
14.30-15.50 Arts
1C18
Beowulf
pgs. 62-106
Beowulf Quiz Available Online
27
28
29
14.30-15.50 Arts
1C18
Liturgical Drama
and Hrotsvitha of
Gandersheim
Text available
online
30
Timeline for Old
English/AngloSaxon Due
OCTOBER 2015
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
1
Friday
2
Saturday
3
Hrotsvitha Quiz Available Online
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
14.30-15.50 Arts
1C18
Wife of Bath's
Prologue and Tale
pgs. 300-321
Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale
Quiz Available Online
11
12
18
19
13
14
15
16
17
20
21
22
23
24
14.30-15.50 Arts
1C18
Cycle Drama and
The Second
Shepherds' Play
Pgs.402-418
Cycle Drama and The Second
Shepherds' Play Quiz Available
Online
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
14.30-15.50 Arts
1C18
Everyman
Text Available off
of Publisher's
Website
Everyman Quiz Available Online
NOVEMBER 2015
Sunday
1
Monday
2
Tuesday
3
Wednesday
4
Thursday
5
Friday
6
Saturday
7
11
12
13
14
14.30-15.50 Arts
1C18
Twelfth Night
Additional Text
Packaged with
Course Text
Middle
English/High
Middle Ages
Timeline Due
8
9
10
14.30-15.50 Arts
1C18
Twelfth Night
Additional Text
Packaged with
Course Text
Twelfth Night Quiz Available
Online
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
14.30-15.50 Arts
1C18
Religious Writing
Amelia Lanyer
717-723
George Herbert
867-877
Religious Writing Quiz Available
Online
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
14.30-15.50 Arts
1C18
Elizabethan
Sonnets
546-554
654-655
791-808
Elizabethan Sonnets Quiz
Available Online
29
30
DECEMBER 2015
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
1
14.30-15.50 Arts 1C18
Jacobean Sonnets
Lady Mary Wroth 851854
John Donne 824, 846849
Wednesday
2
Thursday
3
Friday
4
Saturday
5
Jacobean Sonnets Quiz Available
Online
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
14.30-15.50 Arts 1C18
From Coterie to Closet
Katherine Phillips 891896
Milton 897, 904-910
Timeline for Early
Modern/Renaissance
Due
Assessments:
Timelines: 15% (5%/5%/5%)
Quizzes: 45%
Participation: 15%
Final Exam: 25%
Weekly Quizzes (10 Quizzes for a total of 45%)
The weekly quizzes will be administered online, off of the course website. They will be approximately
10-15 questions long. They will test your knowledge of the period through multiple choice, matching, and
other standard quiz format questions, such as short answer. The quizzes will be available from the end of
the day on Thursday (11:59 PM) to the end of the day on Saturday (11:59 PM) each week. There will be
no make up quizzes allowed. Questions on the quiz may be cumulative. You may have only one attempt
at each quiz.
Timelines (5% each for a total of 15%)
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0Bxuzm3tcySE7fnZzRllQZlgyR2steld1eTJLM3pWUzl
oc2RSdWhsbTZ0Nk5FcUpqMF96SlU&usp=sharing
In Google Drive, I have created a folder that contains three spreadsheets - “Timeline - Old
English”, “Timeline - Middle English”, and “Timeline - Early Modern English”. For this
assignment you are expected to add two events to each of the timelines by the time we finish
studying that period in the course. Each timeline entry is worth 2.5% of your total grade,
resulting in a total of 15% for this assignment.
The timeline is, at its most basic, merely a list of dates and events with a rationale for the
inclusion of those dates or a description. Those three elements - date, event, description - are
essential for every entry in your timeline. Entries are to be chosen according to your own
understanding of what is important to understand the period in question.
The first timeline will outline the history of the medieval period in England, dominated by Old
English (ca. 500CE to ca. 1100CE), the second timeline will outline the history of the medieval
period in England, dominated by Middle English language (ca. 1100CE-ca. 1500CE), and the
final timeline will cover the Renaissance period in England, dominated by early modern English
(roughly ca.1500CE to 1660CE). Each timeline should consist of approximately 50 entries,
outlining what students feel to be the most important, influential, and profoundly impactful
events or texts from the period.
Please see below for example entries. In terms of format, please see the document on the course
website regarding this assignment.
● Entries must be created via the google sheets page, which has some unique properties.
Don’t delete anyone else’s entry, just supply your own.
● If someone else has written on a given event, you cannot write on it as well. Each
entry should be unique both in terms of the content and in terms of the event described.
● Each entry should be factually true, appropriate to the course material or subject covered,
and answer the “so what?” question. By that I mean that the text of each entry should
provide a clear connection to the course in terms of literary history.
Example (Partial) Entry
Start
Date
End Date Headline
2/1/1328
7/17/1453
Text
The Hundred
The
Years War
Hundred between
Years War France...
Media
Media
Credit
https://youtu.be/
LixNElNrJ3c
Youtube
Author Name
Media
Thumbnail
Type
Tag
Andrew Bretz
In each of the spreadsheets you will see the above columns. Do not delete any column. For this
assignment you are expected to fill in:
● The start date for your event in MM/DD/YYYY format
● The end date for your event in MM/DD/YYYY format (If there is one - if the event
happened on a single day, please leave this blank)
● Create a title for your entry
● Enter between 70-200 words of Text
● Provide your name under Author Name
In addition, you may link media to your entry in the form of audio files, youtube clips, google
maps, image files, etc. In each of the timelines are a series of examples that have literally nothing
to do with the medieval and early modern worlds, just to give you a sense of what is possible. If
you do link media, please fill in the credit function as well. (Credit: Where did you find the
media?)
The other columns, for the purposes of this assignment, should be empty.
For further help, please visit the website of this free timeline generator:
http://timeline.knightlab.com/
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask online or in person.
Date
Event
Description
10
October
1066
The Battle of Hastings
The Duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror
(William I) invaded England on somewhat dubious
pretexts following the death of Edward the Confessor
and the subsequent coronation of Harold Godwinson
(Harold II). This, the major battle of the campaign, was
the last time an Anglo-Saxon monarch of England led
troops into battle. With the rise of the Norman kings and
their use of Norman French as the court language, Old
English began to fall into disuse. Within a few
generations, Middle English began to replace the old
language of the Anglo-Saxon indigenous population.
Middle English combined elements of Old English
(inflection, vocabulary, grammar) and imported to it
elements of French (vocabulary, new grammatical
forms, pronunciation).
5 Sept
1607
Hamlet performed
aboard the Red Dragon
The crew of the Red Dragon, a ship off the coast of
Sierra Leone performed Hamlet. This is the first
instance known of a performance of Hamlet, though it
had been undoubtedly performed for years in London.
The event shows the intercontinental nature of English
explorations during the rise of the colonial period and
ties Shakespeare closely to the colonial project of
England.
Nota Bene - Please do not delete anything in the sheets. If you delete someone else’s entry
or if you delete one of the example entries, you will get zero on this assignment
Final Examination 25%
The final examination will consist of two parts.
I.
II.
Part one will be a registrar scheduled examination where students will be asked a number
of short answer, matching, or fill in the blank style questions. This examination is
cumulative and will count for half of the final examination grade. It should take
approximately one hour to complete.
Part two is a short writing assignment (approximately 1000-1200 words) that students are
expected to prepare ahead of time and hand in before taking their registrar scheduled
examinations. The short writing assignment is a research paper. You are expected to
come up with a topic and research question based on the material covered in this course.
Then you are to research that topic and draft a short paper about the topic. You are
encouraged to ask for guidance on this throughout the semester. This will count for half
of the final examination grade
Participation 15%
As this course is a blend of online learning and in class learning, participation is particularly key
to your successful completion of the course. Participation does not merely mean showing up for
class, it means actively participating in the exercises and activities during class time. If you have
not read the material for the week, viewed the videos for the week, or listened to the audio for
the week, then you will not be given participation marks for that week. At the end of each
Tuesday class, I will ask students to complete a five minute paper.
Participation: Five Minute Papers
Five minute papers are short responses, either in point form or whatever form the student
chooses. These papers will ask students a question about the text or about a term of
analysis that we have covered in class. Further, these papers will ask students to come up
with a question about the text at hand. In other words, every week, as you read a new
text, you must come up with a single question about the text to put into the five minute
paper. These questions could be questions that you have regarding the text that are still
left unanswered after the lectures, or they could be suggestions for possible
questions/topics for the final exam, or they could be something else related to the class.
These are designed to be an informal opportunity for students to provide feedback about
the course and to improve knowledge retention. Full marks requires having both a
thoughtful answer and a thoughtful question for your papers for that date.
Submission of Assignments & Late Penalty
● I prefer to mark blind. Do not put your name on your assignments. Instead, identify
yourself with your Student ID number only. This instruction always trumps MLA
formatting expectations.
● I am generally willing to give extensions to students for papers or for exams. If you want
an extension, you have to contact me at least two weeks before the assignment is due.
Only in the case of extreme extenuating circumstances (car accidents, etc) will this rule
be waived.
● An assignment is considered “late” if the student and I have not agreed beforehand to an
alternate deadline to the one noted above. Students handing in essays late will be docked
5% per calendar day until the essay is handed in or until 10 calendar days have passed,
at which time the assignment will receive 0%.
○ For those assignments that are late, no commentary will be given.
Addendum: Grade Review
There will not be any “make-up” assignments allowed. If you feel that you have been unfairly
graded in any given assignment, I am perfectly happy to review your grade, if and only if you
adhere to the following regulations.
● You must submit a written justification for the grade review to me.
● You must in that written justification recognize explicitly that your grade could go
up or it could go down at the end of the review process.
● The written justification must be approximately 200-300 words in length.
Notes on Academic Misconduct
Academic misconduct takes many forms, not least of which is plagiarism. Please refer to the
calendar for a definition on what constitutes academic misconduct at this institution. The
following are common examples of academic misconduct and will not be tolerated in this class:
● Harassment of fellow students or teaching staff;
● Actions that undermine the authority of the professor to assess the class;
● Intellectual dishonesty (Cheating, plagiarism, falsification of records);
● Revising an assignment for re-grading, without the instructor’s knowledge and consent;
● Giving or receiving unpermitted aid on a take-home examination;
● Giving or receiving aid on an academic assignment under circumstances in which a
reasonable person should have known that such aid was not permitted.
Any instances of academic misconduct will be taken up immediately with the
administration.
Accessible Learning
Students with disabilities or special needs are advised to contact Laurier’s Accessible Learning
Centre for information regarding its services and resources. Students are encouraged to review
the Calendar for information regarding all services available on campus.
Academic Misconduct
Wilfrid Laurier University uses software that can check for plagiarism, Turnitin.com. Students
may be required to submit their written work in electronic form and have it checked for
plagiarism.