Course for international guest/part time students
- Faculty
- Faculty of Humanities
- Organization
- BTK Department of English Studies
- Code
- BMI-ANGD17-CI2aE.02
- Title
- Renaissance Poetry - Foundations and Perspectives: Experimenting with Form and Meaning: Major 16th-century Poets in England and Their Legacy
- Usual semester
- Spring
- ECTS
- 3
- Language
- Learning outcomes
- The aim of the course is both to survey Tudor poetry and to focus on poets who are less well known alongside/overshadowed by Shakespeare. We plan to examine linguistic and formal innovations, thematic 'trends' in 16th-century English poetry and their impact on later literary works, primarily through close reading and by examining the cultural and historical background of the author and particular works. The authors we plan to study include (depending on the needs and interests of the students) Skelton, Wyatt, Howard, Sidney, Spenser, Barnes, Watson, Marlowe, Shakespeare and possibly Donne.
- Course content
- On the one hand, as in traditional text reading seminars, we will devote sufficient time to each of the texts studied, and we will close-read and interpret the texts, with at least one session devoted to an author and the texts chosen by the students. On the other hand, we will try to provide more in-depth context to the works with looking at various forms of media (visual arts, music, film...) connected to them, which will hopefully make the interpretation process more exciting and engaging. Looking at the formal and thematic aspects of the texts (e.g. the emergence and gradual change of the sonnets) will be the basic arc of the lessons, and it is hoped that by analysing both well-known and less well-known poetic works, students will gain a deeper knowledge not only of the poetry of the period, but also of its diverse cultural background, intertwined with politics, history and linguistics.
- Assessment method
- Active in-class participation; essay or project; no more than three absences; Canvas assignments
- Bibliography
- The Oxford History of Poetry in English; Volume 4. Sixteenth-Century British Poetry Edited by Catherine Bates and Patrick Cheney The Cambridge History of English Poetry; Chapters 7-10: Sixteenth-century poetry: Skelton, Wyatt and Surrey; Spenser; Sidney, Shakespeare and the Elizabethan sonnet and lyric; The narrative poetry of Marlowe and Shakespeare The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1500–1600; Edited by Arthur F. Kinney English Renaissance poetry; a collection of shorter poems from Skelton to Jonson 1963; English Renaissance poetry; a collection of shorter poems from Skelton to Jonson : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive