Unit name | Shakespeare's Sonnets |
---|---|
Unit code | ENGL39030 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | H/6 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
Unit director | Dr. Lee |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | Department of English |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
Shakespeare is most famous as a writer of plays; he is also one of the greatest lyric poets who has written in English. His Sonnets (published in 1609) may be the most famous love poems in the world. They are also difficult to appreciate fully, both because of their verbal complexity and because of their argumentative inquisitiveness about the nature of the experience of love and sexual desire.
This course aims to help students begin to appreciate the Sonnets. The majority of the course will be given over to detailed discussions of individual sonnets, from which discussions students should become familiar with the chief areas of critical debate. The literary and social history of the sonnet form will also be considered, and students should expect to read sonnets and sonnet sequences by other poets.
By the end of the unit, students will have developed:
2 hour seminars (+ use of 2 Consultation Hours)
2 summative essays: 1 x 2,000 words (33.3%) 1 x 4,000 words (66.7%)
The 2,000 word essay will demonstrate a more limited knowledge of i, ii, iv than the 4,000 word essay. The 4,000 word essay to demonstrate i through v. Given the exploratory and personal nature of the essay, however, a particular answer need not demonstrate i through v.
Key Primary and Secondary Texts:
Booth, Stephen, ed., Shakespeare's Sonnets (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977)
Empson, William, Seven Types of Ambiguity (London: Chatto and Windus, 1930)
Empson, William, Some Versions of Pastoral (London: Chatto and Windus, 1935)
Fineman, Joel, Shakespeare's Perjured Eye (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986)
Kerrigan, J, ed., The Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986)
Vendler, H, The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997)