Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century English Literature
The course aims to familiarize students with 16th and 17th Century English literary texts. It will concentrate on literature composed in the English Renaissance (1500-1660), namely the Elizabethan Age (1558-1603), the Jacobean Age (1603-1625), the Caroline Age (1625-1649) and the Commonwealth Period (1649-1660).
The first half of the course is devoted to English Renaissance texts; Renaissance poetry (Edmund Spencer, Sir Philip Sidney, Shakespearean sonnets, Christopher Marlowe, Sir Walter Raleigh), Renaissance drama and Renaissance prose (Sir Thomas More’s Utopia and the writings of Francis Bacon).
The second part of the course will concentrate on the history of 17th Century England, 17th Century poetry; the Metaphysical Poets such as John Donne and Andrew Marvell and John Milton’s celebrated epic poem Paradise Lost.