COURSE DESCRIPTION
The overarching theme of the course will be how this period of social, political, and religious turmoil gave rise to the realm of the private, including religious introspection and sexual intimacy. Other themes will include: the urban context of seventeenth-century poetry, the way writing fit into the life of the writer, the rise of the profession of writing for both men and women, the development of printed publication as a communications medium, and the difference between the way men and women used the same literary genres. Attention to poetic form and techniques of reading poetry. Readings from John Donne, George Herbert, Ben Jonson, Amelia Lanyer, Mary Wroth, Andrew Marvell.
REQUIRED TEXTS:
John Donne's Poetry. Ed. A. C. Clements. Norton. ISBN: 0393960625
George Herbert and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Poets. Ed. Mario di Cesare. Norton. ISBN: 0393092542
Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets. Ed. H Maclean. Norton. ISBN: 0393093085
Women Poets of the Renaissance. Ed. Marion Wynne-Davies. Routledge. ISBN: 0415923506
The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry. Ed. Thomas N. Corns. Cambridge UP. ISBN 0521423090
See also:
English Literature: Early 17th Century (1603-1660)
Renaissance texts
COURSE OUTLINE:
I. Introduction
Alberti and Perspective 1
Alberti and Perspective 2
II. The city, the house, and coterie circulation
John Donne
Satire I; Satire III; Elegie: The Perfume; Elegie: Going to Bed; Valediction Forbidding Mourning;
Woman's Constancy; The Sun Rising; The Canonization; The Dreame; The Broken Heart; The Ecstacy; The Funeral
John Donne Homepage
John Donne Homepage
Mary Wroth
Pamphilia to Amphilanthus: P1-P9, P25-P27, P44-45, P55, P76-P90, P95 P100-P103
Mary Wroth Homepage
Pamphilia to Amphilanthus
III. The public space of poetry and printed publication
Ben Jonson
Epigrammes I, To the Reader; II, To my Book; III, To my Bookseller (on website below); IV, To King
James; IX, To all to whom I write; XI, On something that walks somewhere; XIV, To William Camden;
XLV, On my first son; CI, Inviting a friend to supper; The Forrest: To Penshurst; Epistle to Katherine
Lady Aubigny; Ode to Sir William Sidney on his Birthday; Underwood: Cary-Morison Ode
Aemelia Lanyer
Dedications, pp.9-117; Salve Rex Judaeorum; The Description of Cooke-ham
IV. Internalizing sacred space: poetry with and without an audienceGeorge Herbert
The Temple: The Altar, The Sacrifice, Good Friday, Easter Wings, Easter, Affliction I, Jordan I, Denial,
Jordan II, Sin's Round, The Bunch of Grapes, The Collar, A True Hymn, A Wreath, Love III
V. Private response to the public climacterick
Marvell
On a Drop of Dew; The Coronet; Bermudas; To His Coy Mistress; The Mower Against Gardens;
Damon the Mower; The Mower to the Glowworms; The Mower's Song; The Garden; An Horation Ode,
Upon Appleton House
Andrew Marvell Homepage
Andrew Marvell Texts
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Duffy, Eamon. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400-c.1580. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992.
Fumerton, Patricia. Cultural Aesthetics : Renaissance Literature and the Practice of Social Ornament. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Grossman, Marshall. Aemilia Lanyer: Gender, Genre, and the Canon. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998.
Lamb, Mary. Gender and Authorship in the Sidney Circle. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.
Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.
Marotti, Arthur F. John Donne, Coterie Poet. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986.
Miller, Naomi J. Changing the Subject : Mary Wroth and Figurations of Gender in Early odern England. Lexington, KY : University Press of Kentucky, 1996.
Schoenfeldt, Michael Carl. Prayer and Power : George Herbert and Renaissance Courtship. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Wall, Wendy. The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance. Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1993.
Waller, Gary F. The Sidney Family Romance : Mary Wroth, William Herbert, and the Early Modern Construction of Gender. Detroit : Wayne State University Press, 1993.