Class Schedule:
Week
Week
1
Week
2
Date
T: August 26
R: August 28
Readings: “Caedmon’s Hymn” (29)
Begin reading Beowulf; the fight with Grendel; Grendel’s mother seeks revenge
T: September 2
Readings: Beowulf, lines 1-1798 (41-79)
Conclude discussion of Beowulf; Beowulf faces the dragon
R: September 4
Week
3
Week
4
Week
5
Week
6
Week
7
Topics and Assignments
Introduction to the course and literary study; early England and the development
of Old English; begin reading Anglo-Saxon literature
Readings: Beowulf, lines 1799-3182 (79-106)
Conclude discussion of Anglo-Saxon literature; examine Irish and AngloNorman literature; Arthurian tales
T: September 9
Readings: “Cuchulainn’s Boyhood Deeds” (112-117); Marie de France - Lanval
(121-134)
Middle English; Chaucer’s life and works; introducing The Canterbury Tales
R: September 11
Readings: The Cantebury Tales “The General Prologue” and summary of “The
Knight’s Tale” (193-214)
Importance of order in The Canterbury Tales
T: September 16
Readings: “The Miller’s Prologue and Tale” (214-230)
Women in Chaucer’s England; Arthurian themes
R: September 18
Readings: “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale” (231-258)
Beast fables and dream sequences; ambiguity in the conclusion of the tales
T: September 23
Readings: “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” Close of The Canterbury Tales and
“Chaucer’s Retraction” (273-288)
A female monarch in England; Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnet forms
R: September 25
Readings: Queen Elizabeth I – Verse Exchange and “Speech to the Troops at
Tilbury” (394-396); Sir Philip Sidney – sonnets 1, 2, 20, 52 (492-494); William
Shakespeare – sonnets 12 (541), 29 (543), 80 (546), 116 (549) and 130 (550)
Shakespeare’s theater; women in Elizabethan England and on the stage
T: September 30
Readings: Othello
Paper 1 due; the Other in Shakespeare’s plays; villains everyone loves to hate
R: October 2
Readings: Othello
Tragedy and comedy on Shakespeare’s stage
T: October 7
Readings: Othello
Religious poetry and commemorative poetry
Readings: John Donne – “The Flea” (669), “Air and Angels” (675), “A
Valediction Forbidding Mourning” (679) Holy Sonnets 1 (689) and 14 (692); Ben
Jonson – “On My First Son” (711), “Queen and Huntress” (717) and “To the
Week
8
Week
9
Week
10
Week
11
Week
12
R: October 9
Memory of My Beloved…” (718-719)
Shaped poems, ribald poets, and reflections on age
T: October 14
Readings: George Herbert – “The Altar” (732) and “Easter Wings” (733); Robert
Herrick – “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” and “Upon Julia’s Clothes”
(743); Andrew Marvell – “To His Coy Mistress” (751-752); John Milton – “How
Soon Hath Time” (796-797), “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent (797)
English Restoration; Jonathan Swift and Ireland; the Ancients and Moderns
R: October 16
Readings: “A Modest Proposal” (1199-1205) and “The Battle of the Books” (link
available on eCampus)
Alexander Pope; Satire and imitation of classical forms
T: October 21
Readings: “The Rape of the Lock” (1227-1244) and “The Dunciad” (1264-1268)
Writing Circle of Pope and Swift
R: October 23
Readings: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu – Letters XXVI and XXXI (1269-1272);
Samuel Johnson – “The Vanity of Human Wishes” (1285-1293); Thomas Gray –
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1396-1399)
Beginnings of Romanticism; William Blake, his poetry and artwork
T: October 28
Readings: Songs of Innocence and Experience (1456-1472); focus on both
introductions, both “The Chimney Sweeper” poems, both “Holy Thursday”
poems, both “Nurse’s Song” poems, “London,” and “The Lamb”/“The Tyger”
Issues of concern; Scotland and the Acts of Union; expanding roles of women
R: October 30
Readings: Robert Burns – “To a Mouse” (1493) and “Tam o’Shanter: A Tale”
(1496-1501); Mary Wollstonecraft – selection from A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman (1506-1532)
Paper 2 due; Romanticism and William Wordsworth
T: November 4
Readings: selections from “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” (1544-1555), “Lines
Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” (1539-1543), “A slumber did my
spirit seal” (1558), “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (1585-1586), “Surprised by
joy” (1594)
Romanticism and the concern with foreignness
R: November 6
Readings: “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” (1662-1664), The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner (1664-1680), “Kubla Khan” (1680-1682)
Return to classicism
T: November 11
Readings: George Gordon, Lord Byron – “She Walks in Beauty” (1726); Percy
Bysshe Shelley – “Mont Blanc” (1788-1791), “Ozymandias” (1794); John Keats
– “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (1877), “Ode to a Nightingale”
(1900-1902), “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1902-1904)
Beginning Victorian literature; mythological themes
Readings: Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Sonnets from the Portuguese 22 and 43
(1999-2000); Alfred, Lord Tennyson – “The Lady of Shalott” (2026-2030),
“Ulysses” (2032-2035); Robert Browning – “My Last Duchess” (2124-2125) and
“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” (2131-2137)
Week
13
Week
14
Week
15
R: November 13
Victorian literature and concern with death
T: November 18
Readings: Matthew Arnold – “Dover Beach” (2172-2173), “Stanzas from the
Grande Chartreuse” (2173-2179); Christina Rossetti – “After Death” (2207),
“Dead before Death” (2208); Gerard Manley Hopkins – “God’s Grandeur”
(2228), “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day” (2234-2235)
Appearances and reality in Victorian literature
R: November 20
Readings: Robert Louis Stevenson – “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde” (2240-2282)
Beginning of the 20th century; World War I
T: November 25
Readings: Thomas Hardy – “The Darkling Thrush” (2397-2398), “The
Convergence of the Twain” (2400-2401); William Butler Yeats – selection from
“A General Introduction for My Work” (2497), “The Stolen Child” (2468-2469),
“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” (2470), “Easter 1916” (2476-2478), “The Second
Coming” (2481-2482)
Modernism; moving between the World Wars
R: November 27
T: December 2
Readings: Virginia Woolf – “The Mark on the Wall” (2505-2510); T.S. Eliot “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (2709-2713)
Thanksgiving – No class. Have a good holiday!
Paper 3 due; Modernism; World War II and its aftermath
R: December 4
Readings: W.H. Auden – “Musee des Beaux Arts” (2823), “The Shield of
Achilles” (2832-2833); Dylan Thomas – “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good
Night” (2841)
Late 20th century and contemporary literature; Postmodernism; Postcolonialism
Finals T: December 9
Readings: Seamus Heaney – “Digging” (2879), “Punishment” (2881-2882);
Margaret Atwood – “Miss July Grows Older” (2906-2908); Salman Rushdie –
“The Prophet’s Hair” (2924-2933)
Final exam 11:00-12:50