Survey Course: Medieval and Renaissance English Literature

Course Code: BBNAN11000/3

Wed 12.30-14.00, Amb 205

Lecturer: Karáth tamás PhD

Welcome to the course! This seminar accompanies the lecture on medieval and Renaissance English literature. While the lecture series provides a broader theoretical background and literary historical context for the major literary works of the medieval period and the 16th-17th centuries, this seminar invites you to close-read and discuss some selected pieces. We will follow the chronology and the themes of the lecture.Most of the readings of the seminar also figure in the obligatory reading list for the exam. Besides discussions, you will have to submit a aper, hold a presentation and write an end-of-term test.

Classes and readings

17 Sept – Authors, readers and audience in medieval English literature. Introduction to the performative context of medieval literature. Samples from Old English literature. Readings (provided on photocopies in class): Caedmon’s Hymn from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, Wulfstan’s “Sermon to the English People”, “The Seafarer”, “The Wanderer”, “The Dream of the Rood” (all in AMEL)

24 Sept – Old English heroic poetry

Beowulf (read Burton Raffel’s translation in AMEL)

1 Oct – Middle English romance

Sir Orfeo (AMEL) and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Part I (AMEL)

8 Oct – High and low: anonymous Middle English religious and secular poetry

Selection of lyric poetry in AMEL, Dame Siriz and the Weeping Bitch (AMEL)

15 Oct – Chaucer

Selection from the Canterbury Tales: “General Prologue”, “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, “The Franklin’s Tale”

22 Oct – Medieval English Drama and Theatre

“The York Play of the Crucifixion”

“The Wakefield Second Shepherds’ Play” (AMEL)

29 Oct – Autumn break

5 Nov – 16th and 17th century prose

Thomas More, Utopia, Book II (read Penguin Books edition in Faculty Library)

Francis Bacon, Essays (in Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. I, pp. 1258-68)

12 Nov – The Sonnet

Selected sonnets by Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Donne and John Milton (copies provided in class)

19 Nov – Elizabethan and Jacobean Theatre: In-class presentations in teams

26 Nov – Shakespeare’s Tragedies: Othello

3 Dec – Shakespeare’s Comedies: Much Ado about Nothing

10 Dec –End-of-term test

Requirements and tasks

(1)No more than 3 absences; over 3 absences the credit is unachieved

(2)Regular preparation of readings and active class participation

(3)Participation in one of the team presentations on 19 November

(4)Moderation of the discussion of a home reading (preparing questions for the discussion and proposing aspects of analysis for the discussion)

(5)Submission of a seminar paper on the analysis of the chosen work of moderation

(6)End-of-term test

Graded tasks and evaluation: (1) Presentation (15%), (2) Seminar paper with moderation (40%), (3)End-of-term test (45%)

Description of tasks

(1)The team presentations on 19 November will be based on four chapters of Part VI (Playing) in A Companion to Shakespeare, edited by David Scott Kastan (Blackwell, 1999; Faculty Library shelf-mark: 263.905). Accordingly, there will be 4 presentation options for which every member of the class must assign: (a) The Economics of Playing, (b) The Chamberlain’s – King’s Men, (c) Shakespeare’s Playhouses, (d) Licensing and Censorship.

The team presentation has to be max. 20 minutes long. The presentation has to involve the concise summary of the chapter (but may also add further illustration to the contents). Teams have to present a ppt slide show. Evaluation sheets of the presentation will be distributed well in advance.

(2)Moderation of a text involves not only the thorough reading of the work, but bringing 3-4 questions to class and proposing 3 aspects of analysis (eventually 3 problems raised by the work). Questions and aspects may pertain to the literary, social and philosophical layers of the work.

(3)The seminar paper must be an argumentative analysis of the work selected for moderation. The paper has to be 3-4 pages long, and its format has to follow the Department BA thesis style sheet:

(4)The end-of-term is based on all the seminar readings (texts assigned to each class) and the following critical material:

a)Patrick Wormland, “Anglo-Saxon Society and its literature” in The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. by Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge. CUP, 1991, pp. 1-22 (available in Faculty Library)

b)Wendy Scase, “Re-inventing the vernacular: Middle English language and its literature” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature 1100-1500, ed. by Larry Scanlon. CUP, 2009, pp. 11-24

c)“Introduction to the 16th Century, 1485-1603” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature I, pp. 395-413

d)“Introduction to the early 17th century, 1603-1660” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature I, pp. 1069-79

Enjoy the class!

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Most medieval readings can be found in An Anthology of Medieval English Literature, ed. Halácsy Katalin. Piliscsaba: PPKE, 1999 (available in the Faculty Library) - AMEL