English 246D

Book List

Bacon, Francis: Essays; Donne, John: Poems; Herbert, George: Poems; Hobbes, Thomas: Leviathan; Jonson, Ben: Poems; Marvell, Andrew: Poems; Milton, John: Political Writings

Description

An introduction to one of the great ages of English literature, focusing on works by Francis Bacon, John Donne, Ben Jonson, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, Robert Herrick, Lucy Hutchinson, and Anne Halkett. We will discuss the relationship between literature and the court of James I, the explosion of pamphlet literature during the English civil war, the controversy over gender roles, the texts surrounding the regicide of Charles I, and the political, religious, and sexual radicalism of dissenting literary culture. We will also take up the question of the different ways in which Renaissance humanism and the literary culture of the Reformation contributed to the flowering of vernacular literature in seventeenth-century England, and will read widely in recent and not-so-recent secondary literature.

This course satisfies the Group 3 (Seventeenth through Eighteenth Century) requirement.