| Unit name | Medieval to Renaissance |
|---|---|
| Unit code | ENGL29022 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Professor. Karlin |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None. |
| Co-requisites |
None. |
| School/department | Department of English |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
How different were literary approaches in the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance? This unit will compare the treatment of some major themes and narratives by medieval and by Renaissance writers. In some cases we look at the same story in different versions: for instance Chaucer’s and Shakespeare’s versions of the tragic love of Troilus and Criseyde, Gower’s and Shakespeare’s versions of ApolloniusIPericles, Malory’s and Hughes’s versions of the end of the Arthurian world. In other cases we look at similar themes, for instance death and possible damnation in Everyman and Marlowe’s Dr Faustus. Topics to be addressed will include the impact of the Reformation, responses to classical narratives, attitudes to kingship, concepts of the family, and representations of women.
Aims:
The comparison of texts from the later Middle Ages and the Early Modern period will allow students to consider both changes and continuities in literary genres and themes, and in attitudes to women and to death, in relation to the political and religious changes of the C16th on the literature of the period. They will increase their command of the literature and language of the two periods, and through seminar discussion will develop their ability to fomulate questions about texts, to assess both primary and critical material, and to construct and express coherent and sustained arguments, both in class discussion and in written work.
Students will be familiar with both major and less well-known texts from both periods studied; they will be aware of literary and linguistic changes and fashions, and will be able to contextualize them in socio-historical and religious terms. They will have developed their ability to analyse texts and assess critical arguments both in class discussion and in written work, using the appropriate technical vocabulary and analytical tools of literary criticism.
1 x 2 hour seminar per week in one teaching block, plus 1-to-1 discussion in consultation hours where desired.
A. C. Spearing, Medieval to Renaissance in English Poetry (Cambridge, 1985)
Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde
Robert Henryson, The Testament of Cresseid
William Shakespeare, Pericles and Troilus and Cressida
James Simpson, English Literary History Vol 2, 1350-1547: Reform and Revolution (Oxford, 2002)
