[ENGL 502] British Literature up to Romanticism

Course Title: British Literature up to Romanticism

Course Description

This course acquaints students with the tradition of British literature up to the Romantic period. Students will explore, appreciate, and analyze the emergence and development of different literary trends, movements, and genres against the backdrop of changing cultural and socio-economic relations in British society during this period.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Acquire a comprehensive knowledge of pre-Victorian British life and letters.
• Situate texts within their historical contexts to unfold meaning and relevance.
• Interpret and analyze texts in terms of cultural and socio-economic aspects in literary imaginings.
• Appreciate texts in different literary trends, movements and genres in English literature.

Course Contents

Unit I: English Literature during the Middle Ages (8 Hours)

1. Context: Norton Introduction to the Medieval Ages (to ca. 1485)
2. "An Ecclesiastical History of the English People"
3. "The Wife's Lament"
4. Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1343 –1400), "The General Prologue" from The Canterbury Tales
5. William Langland (ca. 1330 –1387), "The Prologue" from The Vision of Piers Plowman
6. Sir Thomas Malory (ca. 1405–1471), "The Conspiracy against Lancelot and Guinevere" from La Morte d'Arthur
7. Everyman (after 1485)

Unit II: English Literature during the Sixteenth Century (1485–1603) (8 Hours)

1. Context: Norton Introduction to the Seventeenth Century
2. Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder (1503–1542), "Farewell, Love"
3. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517–1547), "The Soote Season"
4. Elizabeth I (1553–1603), "The Golden Speech"
5. Edmund Spenser (1552? –1599), Canto I from Book 1 of The Faerie Queene
6. Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618), "What Is Our Life?"
7. Christopher Marlowe (1564 –1593), "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"
8. William Shakespeare (1564 –1616), "So Shall I Live Supposing Thou Art True"; As You Like It

Unit III: English Literature in the Early Seventeenth Century (1603–1660) (8 Hours)

1. Context: Norton Introduction to the Early Seventeenth Century
2. John Donne (1572–1631), "The Indifferent"
3. Ben Jonson (1572–1667), "On My First Daughter"
4. John Webster (1580? –1625?), The Duchess of Malfi
5. Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626), "Of Great Place"; "Of Plantation"
6. Andrew Marvell (1621–1678), "The Definition of Love"
7. John Milton (1608–1674), "On Shakespeare"; "When I Consider How My Light Is Spent"

Unit IV: English Literature during the Restoration and Eighteenth Century (1660–1785) (12 Hours)

1. Context: Norton Introduction to the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century
2. John Dryden (1631–1700), "A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire"
3. Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), "The Great Fire" from The Diary
4. John Locke (1632–1704), "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" from The Epistle to the Reader
5. William Congreve (1670–1729), The Way of the World
6. Henry Fielding (1707–1754), "Concerning High People and Low People"
7. Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), "A Modest Proposal"
8. Joseph Addison (1672–1719), "Wit: True, False, Mixed"
9. Richard Steele (1672–1729), "The Spectator's Club"
10. Alexander Pope (1688–1744), "Epistle I: Of the Nature and State of Man with Respect to the Universe" from An Essay on Man
11. Mary Leapor (1722–1746), "An Essay on Woman"
12. Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), "The Vanity of Human Wishes"
13. David Hume (1711–1776), "Of the Liberty of the Press"
14. Edmund Burke (1729–1797), "Speech on the Conciliation with the American Colonies"
15. Thomas Gray (1716–1771), "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
16. William Cowper (1731–1800), "The Castaway"

Unit V: English Literature during The Romantic Period (1785-1832) (12 Hours)

1. Context: Norton Introduction to the Romantic Period
2. William Blake (1757–1837), "The Echoing Green" and "The Garden of Love" from Songs of Innocence and of Experience
3. Robert Burns (1759–1796), "Green Grow the Rashes"
4. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman"
5. William Wordsworth (1770–1850), "Expostulation and Reply" and "The Tables Turned"
6. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), "The Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," and "On Fancy and Imagination" from Biographia and Literaria
7. Charles Lamb (1775–1834), "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading"
8. Jane Austen (1775–1817), Love and Friendship: A Novel in a Series of Letters
9. William Hazlitt (1778–1830), "My First Acquaintance with Poets"
10. Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859), "Preliminary Confession" from Confession of an Opium Eater
11. George Gordon Byron (1788–1824), "Darkness"
12. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1821), "Ode to the West Wind"
13. John Keats (1795–1821), "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and "Ode to Autumn"
14. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851), "The Mortal Immortal"
15. Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838), "Lines of Life"

Evaluation Scheme

Internal Evaluation (40 Marks)

External Examination (60 Marks)

Prescribed Text

Greenblatt, Stephen, ed.
The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed., vol. 1, W.W. Norton, 2013.
---. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 10th ed., vol. D, 2018.