E301 5049 PATRICIA INGHAM
Literatures in English to 1600

9:30a-10:45a TR (30 students) 3 CR. - Satisfies A&H Distribution Requirement

Open to majors only. Declared minors obtain authorization from BH 442.

How do texts of early English Literature imagine the community of peoples they purport to represent? Who has been included and who has been marginalized? How do premodern texts imagine the self in relation to a larger group identity? This course will engage these central questions in its survey of early literature in English from the Anglo-Saxon period to Elizabethan days. Readings will include Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, extensive selections from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, selections from The Book of Margery Kempe, Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, selected poems, plays, and important texts by Surrey, Marlowe, and Shakespeare. Course requirements include a midterm and final, quizzes and exercises, and two longer written analyses. Regular attendance and participation are expected.