English 541-01--Milton
Christopher Hodgkins
Spring 2014
M 6:30-9:20
Moore Hall for Humanities 3209
Office Hours: MW 12-12:30; M 6-6:30, and by appointment
Office: Moore Hall for Humanities 3316
Office Phone: 334-4695
Home Phone: 316-0463
e-mail:
Required Texts: Merritt Y. Hughes, ed., John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose
The Bible (any good English translation)
Handouts on Blackboard
Joseph Gibaldi, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (5th, 6th, or 7th edn.)
Course Schedule
Week 1 (1/13) Introductions; Song: On May Morning
On the Morning of Christ's Nativity; On Shakespeare
Week 2 (1/20) Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday—No Class
Week 3 (1/27) Sonnet IV; L'Allegro; Il Penseroso; Sonnet VII; On Time; At a Solemn
Music; Ad Patrem; Shakespeare’s Sonnets 55, 130 (Handout)
(1/30-2/2) Atlantic World Foodways Conference, EUC—Attend for extra credit
Week 4 (2/3) A Mask (Comus)—entire
Week 5 (2/10) Lycidas; Epitaphium Damonis
Of Education; The Reason of Church Government Urged Against Prelaty
Week 6 (2/17) The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce
Areopagitica; Sonnets XI-XIII; On the
New Forcers of Conscience Under the Long Parliament
Week 7 (2/24) The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (excerpts);
The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (excerpts);
Sonnets XV-XIX, XXII-XXIII;
The Declaration of Independence (Handout excerpts)
Week 8 (3/3) Job 1-2; Aeneid, Book 1 (Handout excerpts);
Paradise Lost, Books 1-2
Week 9 (3/10) Spring Break—No Class
Week 10 (3/17) Genesis 1-5; The Story of Lilith (Handout); Amelia Lanyer:
Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women (Handout);
Paradise Lost, Books 3-4
Week 11 (3/24) Paradise Lost, Books 5-6
Week 12 (3/31) Paradise Lost, Books 7-8
Week 13 (4/7) Paradise Lost, Books 9-10
Week 14 (4/14) Paradise Lost, Books 11-12
Week 15 (4/21) Samson Agonistes—entire
Judges 13-16
Course evaluations
Papers due Friday, 4/25, 4 pm
Week 16 (4/28) Paradise Regained—entire
Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4:1-13
Final Examination: Friday, May 2, 7-10 pm
Possible Report and Paper Topics:
Milton's reception history
Milton's biographers
Milton in fiction
Milton, Chaucer, and Shakespeare (as the “big three”)
Milton's education
Milton and classical paganism
Milton and Christian humanism
Milton's training as a poet
Milton's sonnets
Milton as dramatist
Milton and the elegy
Milton and the epic genre
Milton's philosophy of education
the coming of the English Civil War
Milton and Puritanism
the quarrels about church government
the crisis of authority in the state
Milton's marriages and family life
Milton's divorce tracts
Milton and sex
Milton and gender
Milton and press freedom
Reason in the poems and in the prose tracts
Milton and the Protectorate
Milton and republicanism
Milton and regicide
Milton as bureaucrat
Milton and Marvell
Milton and Restoration politics
Milton and/in America
Milton and New England
Milton and the Anglosphere
Milton and the Founding Fathers
Milton and the Bill of Rights
Milton and Galileo
Milton and astronomy
Milton and natural science
Milton and empire
Milton's philosophy of history
Milton's works of history
Milton's blindness
Milton and music
Milton's theology
Paradise Lost
gestation
cosmology
the hero
embedded lyrics
style
and prophecy
PL and Genesis 1-3
Samson Agonistes and classical tragedy
SA and Judges 13-16
Milton and “terrorism”
Samson as Miltonic alter ego
Paradise Regained as "brief epic"
Milton’s “Son of God” and Jesus—continuity and contrast
PR and the Gospels
Current trends in Milton studies
English 541--Milton--Course Requirements
Response Papers: Once during the semester (Twice for graduate students—by the 8th and 16th weeks, respectively), you will hand in a brief (2-3 pages typed, double-spaced) paper responding to one or more of the texts under discussion. Precisely when and to what you make your response is up to you, as long as 1) you write one or two, depending on your undergraduate or graduate status, and 2) you respond to texts being discussed on that particular evening. Each response paper should offer a concise reading of—a way into—the text. In other words, it should ask some engaging questions of the poem or prose selection, and give some tentative answers to them. Although this is not an oral report (see below), and requires no research beyond a close reading of the text and notes, I do hope that these response papers will serve as sparks for discussion, as you raise questions and hold forth in class about the text.
Oral Reports: Once during the semester, you will give a 10-minute oral report presenting your research into and conclusions about some Miltonic topic. (You will sign up for report topics and dates at our first class meeting on January 13; see the list of suggested topics, or see me about one of your own.) Your report should 1) briefly review important scholarship or criticism on the topic; 2) take a position of your own; and 3) be accompanied by a one-page handout photocopied for class distribution; the handout should include a simple outline of your remarks, and a selected bibliography for further reading. I recommend that you write out your remarks in full and time them, though I will not ask you to turn in the text of your remarks to me.
Final Research Paper: Due Friday April 25. This 12-15 page essay (6-8 pages for undergraduate students) will develop an interpretive argument about one or more of the texts discussed in the course, incorporating primary and/or secondary materials that you've discovered in your library research—perhaps as an outgrowth of your oral report. By "primary sources" I mean literary or historical texts which originated in the period(s) under study; by "secondary sources" I mean any critical, interpretive, or scholarly comment on those primary sources. However, despite the research emphasis here, the key word for this project is still essay. I am most interested in your interpretive ideas, and you should incorporate the fruits of research only as they are relevant to your thesis. Paper format must follow the MLA parenthetical style, using a Works Cited bibliography, as specified in the MLA Handbook.
Especially for the research paper, you'll want to come talk with me early in the process about choosing a topic, researching it, and focusing your topic to a thesis. As stated above, the response papers and oral report will serve as good warm-ups for you.
Late Papers: Late papers will drop a full letter grade per week-day. However, if you know that a major difficulty is coming up and you'll need more time, come see me well in advance.
Final Exam: Friday, May 2, 7:00-10:00 pm. This exam will consist of interpretive essays written about a set of representative Miltonic quotations.
Grading:
Grades will be determined according to the following percentages:
Response papers: 20% (10% each for graduate students)
Oral report: 20%
Final research paper: 40%
Final exam: 20%
Plus or minus considerations of attendance and class participation.