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Lecture List

 

Lecture List 2007-8

 

TERM 1 (commencing Monday 1st October 2007)

 

Week 1: Monday 1st October (11am, SO21)

Introduction to the course                         Elizabeth Clarke

There will be introductory seminars this week too. 

 

Week 2 : October 8th (11am, SO21)

Seventeenth-Century John Donne        Elizabeth Clarke 

Texts to read: poems from the anthology as follows--

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

The Holy Sonnets

Hymn to God my God in my sickness.

Article to read: sections 1-4 of James Doelman's article at

 

http://www.geocities.com/queenswoman/jamesdoelman.html

Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 34, 1994

The accession of King James I and English religious poetry.

 

Question to think about:

How do the Holy Sonnets address contemporary seventeenth-century issues?

 


Week 3: October 15th

Poetry for the masses--Francis Quarles and the emblem poem    Alice Eardley

Reading: Handout with selected emblems and the extract from Quarles' emblem book in the anthology (if we have got it by then)

Question to think about;

Choose one of the emblem books listed below and discuss it with reference to its political, or religious, or social context.


Francis Quarles, Emblemes (1635).

Henry Peacham, Minerva Britannia (1612)


Both these texts can be found on EEBO.


Or:


Choose one emblematic image (eg. the heliotrope turning to follow the sun) and discuss its significance for seventeenth-century literature.

 


Week 4: October 22nd

 

The Jacobean Court Masque                      Justine Williams

(see website for accessing texts of Jonson's Masque of Blackness and Masque of Queens.  Likewise for Oberon. There may be some masques in the Norton anthology which some of you have.)

 

Question for unassessed essay--

How does The Masque of Blackness, The Masque of Queens  or Oberon comment on contemporary court politics? 

 

Week 5: October 29th 

Eastward Ho!         Kim Martin

We have recommened the New Mermaid text and the bookshop can't get those so have got the RSC version in which has no notes. You can get a web version of Eastward HO with no notes so save your money    

Amazon have loads of copies v cheap so lets just hope the post strike finishes soon. The Library have promised to drum up as many Mermaids as they can.

Question to think about--

What is the significance of particular geographical settings within the City of London to the play Eastward Ho!?

 

Week 6 READING WEEK

Do your unassessed essay

Read chapter 5 of Kishlansky if you haven't already done so

 

Week 7: November 12th

George Herbert and the poetics of rhetorical iconoclasm        Elizabeth Clarke

Read the selection of poems in your anthology and the article by me on this website.

Question to think about:

How can a poet's theology affect his poetic style in the seventeenth century? 

 

Week 8: November 19th   

The Cavalier Poets                      Elizabeth Clarke

 Read the selection of poems in your anthology by John Suckling,  Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace and Thomas Carew

Read their biographies in the online Dictionary of National Biography

Question to think about:

What kinds of code would a Royalist use when writing poetry in a hostile environment? 

 

Week 9: November 26th

Marvell and the Civil War        Elizabeth Clarke

 

Week 10: December 3rd

Milton's 1645 volume         Elizabeth Clarke  

I shall focus on 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso' and 'Lycidas'--if I have time I will look at Comus too but that isn't in the anthology.

Please bring copies of these poems as I don't want to sacrifice any more trees,

 

 Estra feedback and help session--December 5th, 3pm, SO21.

 

VACATION (essay 1 due in after Christmas)

The Civil War happens over Christmas so you might want to read the chapters on it in Kishlansky. 

 

 

TERM 2 (commencing Monday January 7th)

 

 

Week 1: January 7th

Katherine Philips and Royalist manuscript culture            Elizabeth Clarke

Please read the poems by her in your anthology.

January 9th--trip to The Country Wife.

 

Week 2: January 14th

Milton's 1671 volume: 'Paradise Regained' and 'Samson Agonistes'             Elizabeth Clarke

Samson  is in your anthology. Some of you are Milton freaks and have got an edition with Paradise Regained  in it and might want to know how it ends...... so I will lecture on both, but you only have to read Samson.

 

Week 3: January 21st

Rochester!

Look out for different timings/locations of this event.... 

ACCR (big lecture theatre in the Arts Centre) at 10am This presentation will be two hours long.


Week 4: January 28th     

Agnes Beaumont and John Bunyan: spiritual autobiography           Elizabeth Clarke  

The text is in the bookshop--they only have 27 but they swear that is all you will buy so prove them wrong and get it! it's cheap and has a great introduction and appendix--have a brief look at Bunyan's text (it's long) but do read the cool narrative by Agnes Beaumont--IS SHE INNOCENT?            


 Week 5: February 4th 

 

Dryden's Absalom and Achitophell and Marvell's Last Instructions to a Painter in Restoration politics                    Elizabeth Clarke

 

For this you will need to know about the Exclusion Crisis and the Popish Plot--chapter 10 in Kishlansky. 


 . 

Week 6:  READING WEEK

 

Week 7: February 18th

 

Etheredge's The Man of Mode, Wycherley's The Country Wife   Thomas Docherty 

 

Week 8: February 25th

Restoration Comedy: The Rover, Aphra Behn       Karen O'Brien 

 

Week 9: March 4th

  Aphra Behn, Oroonoko    

Justine Williams 

 

 Week 10: March 12th 

Hester Pulter        Alice Eardley                    

 

 

 

TERM 3 (commencing Monday April 21st)

Lectures 11am in SO21. No seminars.

Week 1: April 21st

Exam Revision                        Elizabeth Clarke

 

Week 2: April 28th

Exam Revision                       Elizabeth Clarke

 

There will be seminars on individual authors in the examination given after the deadline for the second coursework essay in week 3-to be arranged.