Course Syllabus

After combing through the Norton Anthology for several weeks, and combing through all of your surveys and recommendations, I have arrived at a definitive syllabus for the semester. (Note: the picture above is from the Grand Academy of Lagado in Gulliver's Travels... an academy of ridiculous professors that Jonathan Swift makes fun of. I swear I have no membership in such an academy. Really. I swear I don't.)

I have also decided on two activities that we will do each class:

• First, we shall read a short lyric poems at the beginning of every class; up until the midterm, nearly all of them will be sonnets. Over the course of the quarter you will get a solid foundation in that form, as well as in several other forms of poetry.
  
• On your surveys many of you noted that one thing you hoped to learn this term was how to analyze a piece of literature, and so I will model how I begin to interpret a piece of literature that I'm unfamiliar with. So in each class, YOU will comb through the Norton Anthology and pick out a short work that I have never read--(there are more than you would expect). I think that watching me think through a short work each week will help you: a) in your at-home readings each week; b) in your assigned blog comments; c) in your exams; and d) in your future literature classes. Plus we won't have to spend a week just on sonnets.
  

And now on to the syllabus:

Part I: Chivalry and the Role of Women
T 3/16 - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Books I & II
T 3/23 - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Books III & IV
T 3/30 - Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: General Prologue (ll. 717-860)
Miller's Prologue and Tale
T 4/6 - Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale
T 4/13 - The Book of Margery Kempe
T 4/20 - Christopher Marlowe, "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love"
Sir Walter Ralegh, "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd"
Edmund Spenser, from The Faerie Queen

T 4/27 - In-Class Midterm Exam

Part II: Islands, Sovereignty, & Satire
T 5/4 - Thomas More, Utopia
T 5/11 - Thomas More, Utopia
T 5/18 - William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act I
T 5/25 - William Shakespeare, King Lear, Acts II & III
T 6/1 - William Shakespeare, King Lear, Acts IV & V
T 6/8 - Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Part 1. A Voyage to Lilliput
T 6/15 - Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Part 4. A Voyage to the Country of the Houynhnms

Exact page numbers will be posted here each week. Portions of some works will be cut out, and others will be supplemented with translations. Thus, for example, at home you will read translations of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, but in class we will discuss and reference the original Middle English to get a feel for the poetry.

Happy reading! Study questions will be posted here for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight soon!