Department of English

This course is designed to introduce students to central works by major British authors from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. As we read selected texts by such authors as Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton (among others), we will be looking at how these writers have achieved their status as "major authors." In other words, one goal of this course is to investigate the issue of "canon formation" and its role in current literary studies. In addition, we will be attempting to place our textual analyses in historical context, relating the works we read to such central issues in British history as the changing role of the monarchy, the impact of the Protestant Reformation, the role of women in the late medieval and early modern society, and the issues raised by social mobility and class conflict.