Instructor: Alan Niles
Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00-1:15pm | Location: Sever 206
This course is an introduction to the different voices, cultures, and traditions that made the first 1000 years of English literature, from Beowulf to Aphra Behn. We will study major and influential writings alongside lesser-known interlocutors—works by Marie de France, Geoffrey Chaucer, Margery Kempe, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Mary Sidney, John Milton, Alexander Pope, and more. We will engage with the (often contested) social, political, and religious contexts that gave rise to creative work. We will pay particular attention to the historical transformations of romance, epic, drama, fable, and lyric, and the ways these forms were embedded in the social worlds of their time.
This course satisfies the English Concentration "Arrivals" requirement for students on the “Common Ground” curriculum.
This course satisfies the “Pre-1700 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.