Katy Stavreva
English 304: Fall 1999
Saint Ambrose College
stavreva@saunix.sau.edu
Hollander and Kermode, The Literature of Renaissance England.
Shakespeare, Macbeth: Text and Contexts, ed. Carroll.
Welcome to the material Renaissance! Our concern this semester will be the "weighty" matter of books and images. In the early modern period, their composition and consumption created and sustained religious, political, and household communities. Intensely read and re-read, texts shaped minds. Published in the right format, appropriately bound and circulated, a book could literally make a man or a woman. Or else, unmake them. Words and images were a matter of life and death: they sealed romantic relationships and political alliances, but could also hurt, condemn, or kill.
In this class, we will read in familiar and unfamiliar ways, feel, hear, reproduce, and analyze a series of texts and images by early modern men and women¾royalty, nobility, and those of the "middling sort." As we discuss their material dimensions, cultural contexts, rhetorical and visual strategies, we will be haunted by the same question: what difference did they make to the lives of their 16th and 17th century audiences?
Let me also remind you that this is an affiliated class of the Women's Studies Program. Gender issues will often be the subject of discussion in our classroom. But more importantly, I would like to encourage at any time your comments and writings on women authors and, more generally, on the gender dimension of the Renaissance.
Active class participation is vital to your success and the success of this course. Paying due respect to the readings means coming to class ready to articulate, examine, and negotiate the responses you have formed. In addition, for each class session except for the interlude, you will bring to class two questions, engaging one or more of the readings in a specific, thoughtful and provocative manner. We will, as a class, address these questions in discussion. The questions should be entered into your commonplace book.
Commonplace book. Modeled after early modern commonplace books that we will view in class, yours will include extracts from the assigned texts that you'd like to "chew and digest" and your questions and ruminations on them and on the images assigned for viewing. In our efforts to emulate and reflect upon the public nature of the early modern engagement with texts and images, we will often begin class discussions with readings from each other's commonplace books.
Presentation. Once this semester you will be a member of a panel. Panels occur (usually) at the end of each of our reading cycles (see reading schedule below). Your task will be to summarize briefly the points of an assigned critical article or book chapter, sketch an application of the critical material to the texts or images we have discussed, and then provide questions for the class to begin overview discussion.
Editing Project. As an editing collective, the class will produce a teaching version of Katharine Evans' and Sarah Chevers' This is a Short Relation (1662) for future students in this course. We will do some preparatory editing exercises in class.
Two analytical papers. One will be a focused "issues" piece, dealing with a literary text from our readings, the other will bring together text and image. Informal writing exercises will prepare you for these longer projects.
NOTE: This schedule is not written in stone. Please bring it to class to record adjustments as they occur. All parenthetical page references are from The Literature of Renaissance England, unless otherwise indicated.
Introduction
Aug. 23
Defining the Renaissance and ourselves.
Aug. 25
The printing press, reading modes and communities, patronage.
Bacon, "Of Studies"(943-44); Castiglione/Hoby, The Book of the Courtier (84-98).
Suggested reading: "The Renaissance" (3-18).
Aug. 27
Reading modes and communities, cont.
Donne, from "A Sermon Preached at St. Paul's for Easter-Day, 1628" (558-64); "The English Bible," and excerpts from the Geneva Bible, the Douay-Reims Version, and the King James Authorized Version (28-34).
Aug. 30
Reading modes and communities, cont.
More, Utopia, from Book I (54-60).
Suggested reading: "The English Humanists" (50-52).
Sept. 1
Utopia, from Book II (60-69).
Cycle 1: Sonnets, Lyrics, Miniatures
Sept. 3
Constructions of subjectivity.
Wyatt, "Whoso List to Hunt," "They Flee from Me" (121); Sidney, Astrophil and Stella 3 (130-). Images of miniature paintings (on electronic reserve).
Sept. 6
Labor Day (No class).
Sept. 8
Subjectivity, continued.
Shakespeare Sonnets 86, 116, 144, 146 (432-).
Sept. 10
Constructions of gender.
Shakespeare 20, 138 (429, 437); Elizabeth I, "On Monsieur's Departure" (on electronic reserve).
Sept. 13
Women in the sonnets: self-expressions and cultural stereotypes.
Wroth, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus P15-17, P 25, P 39-40 (handout).Shakespeare 130 (436); Donne, Holy Sonnets 2 (551).
Sept. 15
Overview and panel presentation on Fumerton, Cultural Aesthetics, ch. 3 (on library reserve).
Cycle 2: Theater Magic and Witchcraft
Sept. 17
Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, sc. 1-5 (346-).
Exercise on passage commentary.
Sept. 20
Doctor Faustus, sc. 6-10.
Sept. 22
Doctor Faustus, sc. 11-epilogue.
Sept. 24
Newes from Scotland (MB 313-20), Scot (MB 308-9, 352-53).
Sept. 27
Macbeth 1.1-1.3, Act against Fond and Fantastical Prophecies (MB 335-36).
Suggested reading: "Prophecy" (MB 330-35).
Sept. 29
Macbeth 1.5-1.7, Clinton (MB 364), Sadler (MB 357-61).
Oct. 1
Macbeth 2, Parsons (MB 196-200), Hayward (MB 203-4).
Oct. 4
Macbeth 3-4.2, Coke (MB 265-66), Garnet (MB 266).
Suggested reading: "Equivocation" (MB 263-64). Paper #1 due.
Oct. 6
Macbeth 4.3, Ponet (MB 237-38), Buchanan (MB 242-44), Homily against Disobedience and Willful Rebellion (MB 238-41).
Oct. 8
Midterm (No class).
Oct. 11
Macbeth 5, Harrison (MB 280-86).
Oct. 13
Overview and panel presentation on selections from Diehl, Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage (on library reserve).
Cycle 3: The Pastoral
Oct. 15
Marlowe, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" (408); Donne, "The Bait" (537); Marvell, "Damon the Mower" (652).
Oct. 18
Donne, "The Good Morrow" (524), "A Valediction: Of Weeping" (533); "The Ecstasy" (539).
Oct. 20
Alciato's Book of Emblems (on electronic reserve). Psalm 137: in the King James Bible, by the Countess of Pembroke, by Richard Crashaw (34-). Exercise on inter-arts writing.
Oct. 22
Herbert, "The Altar," "Easter Wings," "The Church-Floor" (667-).
Oct. 25
Milton, Comus (722).
Oct. 27
Continue Comus. Family portraits (on electronic reserve).
Oct. 29
Overview and panel presentation on Alpers, What Is Pastoral?, ch. 8 (on library reserve).
Interlude: Production Matters
Nov. 1
Editing exercises on Cartwright, Petition of the Jewes (in RWO).
Paper #2 due.
Nov. 3
Editing party.
Cycle 4: Home and Away from Home: Country-House Poems, Drama, and Non-Fiction
Nov. 5
Jonson, "To Penshurst" (575). Selections from Orlin, Elizabethan Households (on electronic reserve).
Nov. 8
Lanyer, "The Description of Cooke-ham" (on electronic reserve).
Nov. 10
New World reports (42-50) and selections from New World of Wonders (on electronic reserve).
Nov. 12
Shakespeare, Tempest (444).
Nov. 15
Tempest, cont.
Nov. 17
Tempest, cont.
Nov. 19
Quakers and Other Civil War Sects: Politics, Community, Language.
Nov. 22
Chevers and Evans, This is a Short Relation of Some of the Cruel Sufferings. OED exercise. Declare final project topics.
Nov. 24-26
Thanksgiving Break.
Nov. 29
Continue Short Relation.
Dec. 1
Overview and panel discussion: Pearson, "Women Reading, Reading Women," and Graham, "Women's Writing and the Self" (on library reserve).
Dec. 13
Last thoughts on Renaissance texts and images.
Final exam during finals week: editing project. Turn in your section of the St. Ambrose Edition of Short Relation.