Medieval and Renaissance English Literature BBNAN010000
Course Syllabus and Reading List
Sept 12 Introduction to the medieval world
The story of Caedmon from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History
King Alfred’s Preface to the translation of Gregory’s Pastoral Care
Sept 19 Old English prose and verse
The Seafarer
The Wanderer
The Battle of Brunanburh
The Battle of Maldon
The Dream of the Rood
Lines 1-52 of Beowulf
Sept 26 Middle English lyric poetry and romance
A selection of lyric poems
Either Sir Orfeo, or Sir Launfal (Modern English versions on the net), or Sir Gawain and
the Green Knight (Marie Boroff's translation in the Norton Anthology)
Oct 3-10 Geoffrey Chaucer 1-2
Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (Nevil Coghill's translation in the Penguin Classics
edition)
General Prologue
The Miller's Tale
The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale
The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale
The Nun's Priest's Tale
The Franklin's Tale
The Parson's Prologue and Chaucer's Retractions
Oct 17 Medieval drama and other late medieval genres
The York Play of the Crucifixion (in The Norton Anthology)
Nov 7 Introduction to the Literature of the 16th-17th Centuries
Thomas More: Utopia.
Nov 14 Lyrical poetry
The Sonnet
Sir Thomas Wyatt: “Whoso List to Hunt”
Shakespeare’s Sonnets 75, 130
John Donne: Elegy 19. “To His Mistress Going to Bed”, Holy Sonnets No. 14
Nov 21 Narrative Poetry
John Milton: Paradise Lost Book I
Nov 28 Theatre and Shakespeare’s History Plays
Richard III
Dec 5 Shakespeare's Tragedies
Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, or King Lear, or Macbeth, or Othello, or Julius Caesar.
Katalin Halácsy Ph.D.
reader
halacsy@btk.ppke.hu
Office hour: Monday 13:30-14:30
Friday 08.30-10:00 Amb. 302
Zsolt Almási Ph.D.
reader
almasi.zsolt@btk.ppke.hu
Office hour: Wednesday 11.30-12.30 Amb. 132
Medieval and Renaissance English Literature BBNAN010000
Course Syllabus and Reading List
Dec. 12 Shakespeare’s Comedies ( + problem plays and romances)
Much Ado about Nothing, or As You Like It, or Measure for Measure, or The Tempest.
Recommended reading for Medieval Literature:
Beowulf
The entry of 1066 from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde (Nevil Coghill's translation, Penguin Classics edition)
The Canterbury Tales
Pearl (Brian Stone's translation in Medieval English Verse, Penguin Classics, or any other verse
translation [J.R.R. Tolkien or Marie Boroff])
The Second Shepherds’ Play
Everyman
Useful secondary sources for Medieval Literature:
Introductions to the pieces in The Norton Anthology of English Literature
Andrew Sanders: The Short Oxford History of English Literature, preferably Second edition, OUP
2000
R. D. Fulk: A History of Old English Literature, Blackwell 2003
A Concise Companion to Chaucer, ed. Corinne Saunders, Blackwell 2006
or the volumes of the Cambridge Companion series
Useful secondary sources for Renaissance Literature:
Géher István. Shakespeare olvasókönyv. Tükörképünk 37 darabban. Budapest: Cserépfalvi és
Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadók, 1991. (or any later edition of the book)
Tucker Brooke, Matthias A. Shaaber. A Literary History of England vol. 2. The Renaissance 15001660, ed. Alfred C. Baugh (London: Routledge, 1993)
A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture. ed. Michael Hattaway (Oxford, Malden:
Blackwell, 2003)
A Companion to Shakespeare, ed. David Scott Kastan, Oxford – Malden (Mass.): Blackwell
Publishers Ltd., 1999
Assessment:
Oral examination based on lecture notes, on the mastery of primary sources, text recognition.
Katalin Halácsy Ph.D.
reader
halacsy@btk.ppke.hu
Office hour: Monday 13:30-14:30
Friday 08.30-10:00 Amb. 302
Zsolt Almási Ph.D.
reader
almasi.zsolt@btk.ppke.hu
Office hour: Wednesday 11.30-12.30 Amb. 132