English Literature I (Elizabethan Drama to the Eighteenth Century)
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Chung Hsing University
Professor Shu-ching Chen
Spring, 2007
Office: 701; 713
Office Hours: Friday 2:00-4:00 PM or by appointment
A Syllabus
Course Description:
The second semester of this introductory course of English Literature will strive to
provide a survey of English literature from the Restoration to the Eighteenth century, based
upon the understanding of the social, political and cultural history of England, the
investigation of literary genres, and the scrutiny of the idea of “human,” “humanism” and
“individual subjects” in its specific social historical contexts. We will pay special attention
to the dialectics of form and content in terms of specific literary genres, the concept of
individual subjects in relation to God, the church, kings, the noble men and fellow
commoners, the ideas of gender, class and nation, and the division between public and private
spaces as they are expressed and represented in literature.
Selected works of Shakespear, Milton, John Donne, Ben Jonson, Jonathan Swift,
Alexander Pope, etc.
Class Policy:
There will be at least 2 pop quizzes before the midterm exam and another 2 pop quizzes after
the midterm. So make sure you are fully prepared before you step in to our class.
Each absence without leave will cost you 2 points of deduction in your final grade.
Midterm 35%, Final Exam 35%, pop quizzes, attendance and class performance 30%
Office: Y 713
Office hour: Friday 2:00pm-5:00pm or by appointment
Course Schedule:
The content and the scope of the assigned readings may subject to revision if necessary.
1
Date
Assigned Reading
Page numbers
2/20
Introduction to Elizabethan Drama;
Movie: Shakespeare in Love
2/24
Shakespearean Sonnets
2/27
Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 1
1106-1131
3/3
Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 2
1131-1147
3/6
Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 3
1147-1162
3/10
Introduction to The Early Seventeenth Century
1603-1660
1209-1220
3/13
Introduction to The Early Seventeenth Century
1220-1230
1603-1660
3/17
John Donne “The Flea” “The Good-Morrow” “
“Song’ “The Cannonization”
3/20
John Donne, “Love’s Alchemy” “A Valediction: 1245, 1248-1249
Forbidden Mourning”
3/24
Aemilia Lanyer, The Description of Cooke-ham
1287-1292
3/27
Ben Jonson, The Masque of Blackness
1294-1303
3/31
Ben Jonson, Epigrams: To My Book
To Penshurst; Song: To Celia
1393-1394
1402-1403
4/7
George Herbert,
1236,1236-1237,
1237-1238, 1240-1241
Robert Herrick
4/10
Andrew Marvell, “A Dialogue Between the Soul 1687-1688, 1688-1691,
and the Body” “The Nymph Complaining for the 1691-1692
Death of Her Fawn” “To His Coy Mistress”
4/14
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1
1815-1836
4/17
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1
1815-1836
4/21
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 2
1836-1858
4/24
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 3
1858-1874
4/28
Midterm Exam
5/1
Introduction to the Restoration
Eighteenth Century (1660-1785)
and
the 2045-2054
5/5
Introduction to the Restoration
Eighteenth Century (1660-1785)
and
the 2055-2061
5/8
Introduction to the Restoration
Eighteenth Century (1660-1785);
Movie: Restoration
and
the 2062-2068
5/12
John Dryden, “Absalom and Achitophel”
2
2077-2099
5/15
Samuel Pepys, John Bunyan, John Locke
5/19
Aphra Behn, Oroonoko
5/22
Daniel Defoe and the rise of the novel
2170-2215
5/26
Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels
2329-
5/29
Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels
2329-2473
6/2
Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele
6/5
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
2509-2524
6/9
Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock
2525-2535
6/12
Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock
2536-2544
6/16
Samuel Johnson,
6/19
Frances Burney
6/23
Final Exam
3