Class Archive

104/1

Introduction to Old English

TuTh 2-3:30

This course is aimed at beginners, whether graduate* or undergraduate, familiarizing them with the principles and practice of linguistic decoding in relation to both medieval manuscripts and modern editions, as well as with the grammar and vocabula...(read more)

111/1

Chaucer

MW 5-6:30

115A/1

The English Renaissance (through the 16th Century)

TuTh 5-6:30

In this course, we follow how English authors from Thomas More to John Donne participated in the grand cultural project of the Renaissance, defined by the belief that consuming and producing culture would elevate human beings above their natural st...(read more)

119/1

Literature of the Restoration and the Early 18th Century

MW 11-12:30

190/7

Research Seminar:
Medieval Sexualities

TuTh 5-6:30

Contact Jennifer Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu for more information about this class.

111/1

Chaucer

MWF 1-2

For more information about this class, please contact Jennifer Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

125A/1

The English Novel (Defoe through Scott)

TTh 12:30-2

The period from which our reading draws has been credited with the “rise of the novel”—the emergence of the then new genre, the “novel,” so familiar to us today. While critics have qualified and revised that claim, the...(read more)

130A/1

American Literature: Before 1800

TTh 11-12:30

A survey of English-language American literature to 1800. We will read a wide range of texts from narratives of colonial settlement through the literature of the American Revolution, the Constitutional Convention, and the early republic. Topics to ...(read more)

190/7

Research Seminar:
Race and Travel: Relative Alterity in Medieval Times and Places

MW 5-6:30

Anyone who has travelled or lived in parts of the world (including their own country) where they were visibly an outsider—by countenance, clothing or conduct—will have experienced the sometimes fearful instability of “otherness&rd...(read more)

166/1

Special Topics:
Epic Poetry

MW 2-5

This course will be a thorough investigation of one of the most important poetic forms in literary history: the epic poem. The epic poem in the period we will be looking a...(read more)

104/1

Introduction to Old English

TTh 2-3:30

This course is aimed at beginners, whether graduate* or under...(read more)

114B/1

English Drama from 1603 to 1700

TTh 2-3:30

Reaching across the upheavals of the seventeenth century, thi...(read more)

118/1

Milton

TTh 5-6:30

We'll explore John Milton's entire career, a lif...(read more)

190/5

Research Seminar:
Anti-Jewish Diatribe in Medieval England

TTh 3:30-5

110/1

Medieval Literature:
Love in the Middle Ages

MWF 10-11

Set aside the stereotypes: there’s more to medieval love than gallant knights and fair maidens. In this course, we'll traverse the many ways one could write about love before 1400. Some medieval authors cultivated divine love, while ...(read more)

112/1

Middle English Literature

MW 5-6:30

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

119/1

Literature of the Restoration and the Early 18th Century

TTh 11-12:30

The period from the “Restoration” of Charles II (1660) to the death of Alexander Pope (1744) produced the last poems of Milton, the first English pornography and feminist polemic, the most devastating satires ever written, influential n...(read more)

120/1

Literature of the Later 18th Century

TTh 3:30-5

We’ll investigate the relationship of literature to other arts in the period, particularly painting and landscape design. Our focus will be on engagements with “nature,” understood as the non-human world and the ground of culture....(read more)

130A/1

American Literature: Before 1800

Lectures TTh 1-2 + one hour of discussion section per week (sec. 101: F 1-2; sec. 102: F 2-3)

This course will offer a survey of the literature in English produced in North America before 1800: competing British versions of settlement; Puritan history, sermons, and poetry; conversion, captivity, and slave narratives; diaries, journals, essa...(read more)

104/1

Introduction to Old English

TTh 12:30-2

This course is aimed at beginners, whether graduate* or undergraduate, familiarizing them with the principles and practice of linguistic decoding and the grammar and vocabulary of, primarily, Old English prose: historiographical (histories), hagiog...(read more)

118/1

Milton

MW 5-6:30

166/3

Special Topics:
The Age of Crisis

TTh 3:30-5

(read more)

190/10

Research Seminar:
Medieval Sexuality

TTh 5-6:30

For more information about this section of English 190, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

104/1

Introduction to Old English

TTh 12:30-2

This course is aimed at beginners, whether graduate* or undergraduate, familiarizing them with the principles and practice of linguistic decoding and the grammar and vocabulary of, primarily, Old English prose: historiographical (histories), hagiog...(read more)

114B/1

English Drama from 1603 to 1700

TTh 2-3:30

Reaching across the upheavals of the seventeenth century, this class studies the triumphant age of drama after Shakespeare, the Jacobean period; the reactions against the drama that led to the closing of London's theaters during the English Civ...(read more)

115B/1

The English Renaissance (17th Century)

TTh 3:30-5

An introduction to one of the great ages of English literature, focusing on works by John Donne, Ben Jonson, George Herbert, Thomas Hobbes, Andrew Marvell, John Milton, Robert Herrick, Margaret Cavendish, Katharine Phillips. We will discuss the rel...(read more)

118/1

Milton

Lectures MW 2-3 in (note new room:) 243 Dwinelle + one hour of discussion section per week in different locations (sec.101: F 1-2; sec. 102: F 2-3)

We'll explore John Milton's career, a lifelong effort to unite intellectual, political, and artistic experimentation.

Required Text: John Milton, The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, ed. Willi...(read more)

125A/1

The English Novel (Defoe through Scott)

MWF 1-2

The period from which our reading draws has been credited with the “rise of the novel”—the emergence of the then new genre, the “novel,” so familiar to us today. While critics have qualified and revised that claim, the...(read more)

130A/1

American Literature: Before 1800

TTh 11-12:30

This course surveys the literatures of early America, from the tracts that envisioned the impact of British colonization to the novels that measured the after-shock of the American Revolution.  Throughout, we will consider colonial America as ...(read more)

165/2

Special Topics:
Enlightenment & Romance: Scotland in the 18th Century

MWF 10-11

Eighteenth-century Scotland was home both to the so-called Scottish Enlightenment, one of the advanced civil societies in the Atlantic world, and to the beginnings of the global movement of taste and feeling later to be called Romanticism. Here wer...(read more)

166/7

Special Topics:
Arthurian Romance

TTh 2-3:30

King Arthur and his Round Table together constitute one of the most enduring imaginative inventions in the European literary tradition. In the modern era, writers and artists have created Arthurian plays, films, poems, novels, cartoons, paintings, ...(read more)

190/4

Research Seminar:
Poetry and the Virtues

MW 5-6:30

Arguments for the moral value of literary study often focus on how narrative forms like the novel offer opportunities for the cultivation of empathy. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, literary style itself was treated as an extension ...(read more)

111/1

Chaucer

MWF 2-3

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This class satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

115A/1

The English Renaissance (through the 16th Century)

MWF 12-1

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This class satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

120/1

Literature of the Later 18th Century

W 3-6

We’ll investigate the relationship of literature to other arts in the period, particularly painting and landscape design. Our focus will be on engagements with “nature,” understood as the non-human world and the ground of culture....(read more)

165/2

Special Topics:
The Pleasures of Allegory

MWF 12-1

If you want to understand both how stories are put together and how we experience stories, allegory is not a bad place to start. Broadly speaking, an allegory is a story that demands to be read on more than one level. One version of this&mdash...(read more)

166/8

Special Topics:
Green Thought in a Green Shade

TTh 2-3:30

The natural world and the non-urban environment have inspired writers and artists, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, but they have also provoked intense critical d...(read more)

166AC/1

Special Topics in American Cultures:
Race and Revision in Early America

Lectures MW 1-2 in 50 Birge + one hour of discussion section per week in various locations (sec. 101: F 1-2; sec. 102: F 2-3; sec. 104: Th 10-11; sec. 105: Th 2-3; sec. 106: Th 4-5)

In this course, we will read both historical and literary texts to explore how racial categories came into being in New World cultures, and how these categories were tested, inhabited, and re-imagined by the people they sought to define. Our s...(read more)

190/2

Research Seminar:
Shakespeare and Company

MW 1:30-3

In this research seminar, we'll be considering Shakespeare, his playwriting rivals, his actorly partners, and their audiences as participants in the burgeoning entertainment industry of early modern London. We'll attend to the conditions an...(read more)

111/1

Chaucer:
Canterbury Tales

MW 5-6:30

In the late fourteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer created a fictional pilgrimage in which travelers competed with one another to tell a tale “of best sentence and moost solaas”—meaning, a tale that best combines moral seriousness w...(read more)

114A/1

English Drama to 1603

TTh 12:30-2

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This class satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

115A/1

The English Renaissance (through the 16th Century)

TTh 3:30-5

In this course, we follow how English authors from Thomas More to John Donne participated in the grand cultural project of the Renaissance, defined by the belief that consuming and producing culture would elevate human beings above ...(read more)

115B/1

The English Renaissance (17th Century)

MWF 1-2

A survey of England's "century of revolution," focusing on relationships between literature, religion, and politics. Readings will be made available electronically and in an optional reader.

This class satisfies the pre...(read more)

119/1

Literature of the Restoration and the Early 18th Century

TTh 11-12:30

In this course we shall read a variety of texts that sought to represent strange new worlds—or invited readers to see their own world as strange—from Royal Society publications describing microscopic worlds to popular voyage accounts re...(read more)

130A/1

American Literature: Before 1800

TTh 12:30-2

This course provides a survey of English-language American literature to 1800. We will explore a wide range of texts from narratives of colonial settlement through the literature of the American Revolution, the Constitutional Convention, and the ea...(read more)

165/1

Special Topics:
Global Tudors

This seminar challenges us to look back to a time before England's colonial period and consider how people of the 16th century began to perceive of themselves as part of a truly global world. The class will begin by thinking about what the conc...(read more)

165/3

Special Topics:
John Milton's Last Poems

MW 5-6:30

Four years after publishing the first edition of Paradise Lost, Milton came out with a volume called Paradise Regain’d...to which is added, Samson Agonistes. We will spend the semester carefully reading these poems...(read more)

180E/1

The Epic: Imagined Communities and the Classical Epic

TTh 5-6:30

I am  convinced that the classical epic is crucial for a literary education whatever field you specialize in—for the profound encounters it offers, for the intensity and vivacity of the memorable scenes the works construct, and...(read more)

190/6

Research Seminar:
Carnal Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Literature

TTh 9:30-11

Medieval feminist scholar Carolyn Dinshaw has argued that the body is "a field on which issues of representation and interpretation are literally and metaphorically played out" ("Eunuch Hermeneutics," 27). This re...(read more)

111/1

Chaucer

TuWTh 9:30-12

In this course we will study The Canterbury Tales and its continuations, paying special attention to the topics of imitation, innovation, and literary influence. As we learn about the literary traditions Chaucer so deftly passes over and t...(read more)

104/1

Introduction to Old English

MWF 11-12

This course will equip you to read the earliest English literature: lives of saints, accounts of Viking invasion, poetry about onions, and the rest. You will learn to read Old English by direct study of texts in the original. This course will help ...(read more)

110/1

Medieval Literature

MWF 2-3

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

118/1

Milton

MW 5-6:30

Probably the most influential and famous (and, in his own time, infamous) literary figure of the seventeenth century, John Milton has too often been misrepresented as a mainstay of a traditional canon rather than as the rebel he was. Those who do n...(read more)

166/3

Special Topics:
Journeys: British World-Building, c. 700-1700

TTh 11-12:30

"Britain, formerly known as Albion, is an island in the ocean, lying towards the north west at a considerable distance from the coasts of Germany, Gaul, and Spain, which together form the greater part of Europe." (Bede, Ecclesias...(read more)

166AC/1

Special Topics in American Cultures:
Race & Revision in Early America

Lectures MW 1-2 + one hour of discussion section per week (sec. 101: F 10-11; sec. 102: F 1-2; sec. 103: Thurs. 10-11; sec. 104: Thurs. 1-2; sec. 105: Thurs. 1-2; sec. 106: Thurs. 4-5)

In this course, we will read both historical and literary texts to explore how racial categories came into being in New World cultures, and how these categories were tested, inhabited, and re-imagined by the human actors they sought to define.&nbsp...(read more)

180E/1

The Epic

TTh 12:30-2

Homer’s Iliad was composed in the eighth century BCE. Both the story that it narrated (the conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans) and the particular form that the story took (the genre of the epic) would become foundational bui...(read more)

190/14

Research Seminar

MW 5-6:30

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

Please read the paragraph about English 190 on page 2 ...(read more)

112/1

Middle English Literature

TTh 2-3:30

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

118/1

Milton

Lectures TTh 11-12 + one hour of discussion section per week (sec. 101: F 9-10; sec. 102: F 1-2)

We'll explore John Milton's whole career, a lifelong effort to unite intellectual, political, and artistic experimentation.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

125A/1

The English Novel (Defoe through Scott)

TTh 12:30-2

The period from which our reading draws has been credited with the “rise of the novel”—the emergence of the then new genre, the “novel,” so familiar to us today. While critics have qualified and revised that claim, the...(read more)

130A/1

American Literature: Before 1800

MWF 2-3

This course surveys the literatures of early America, from the tracts that envisioned the impact of British colonization to the novels that measured the aftermath of the American Revolution.  Throughout, we will consider colonial America as a ...(read more)

165/2

Special Topics:
Handel's Art in Setting English Words to Music

MW 3:30-5

Rhythm is a significant source of artistic effects in both poetry and music.  However, while the forms it can take in the two arts are similar in some ways, they are different in others.  An interesting window into these similarities and ...(read more)

166/3

Special Topics:
Classical & Renaissance Drama

TTh 3:30-5

In a poem for the first edition of Shakespeare’s collected plays in 1623, his fellow playwright Ben Jonson expressed a characteristic ambivalence about classical drama.  On the one hand, he praised it as the standard by which all subsequ...(read more)

174/2

Literature and History:
History as Literature

TTh 3:30-5

Are the events of the world and human lives meaningful? And if they are, how do we discern the meaning?

History, as a form of narrative literature, seeks to answer these questions. In this class we will read a range of historical texts, w...(read more)

180R/1

The Romance

MW 5-6:30

Everybody thinks they know what “romance” is, but in fact the term is controversial and difficult to define. Does it mean escapist fiction with monsters and enchanters, entertaining but unbelievable? (What makes fiction believable(read more)

190/9

Research Seminar:
The Faerie Queene: The Ethics of Imagination

TTh 2-3:30

Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene (1590-96) is the most vast, most gorgeous, and most deliriously strange of English poems. Its hallucinatory dreamworld mingles self with landscape, character with plot, happenstance events with ...(read more)

190/10

Research Seminar:
Pagan Fictions in Christian Literature

TTh 5-6:30

Although late antique and medieval Christian authors routinely decried the falsehood of pagan literature, they could hardly get enough of it. Pagan mythology became not only a major inspiration of medieval poetry and philosophy but even a part of e...(read more)

190/11

Research Seminar:
Andrew Marvell

TTh 5-6:30

An intensive study of Marvell's poetry and prose. Students will complete a final research paper of 15-20 pages. 

All readings will be made available on the course site.

This section of English 190 satisfies the pre-...(read more)

166/2

Special Topics:
Games of Thrones, Medieval to Modern

TuWTh 10-12

This course will show how Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire draw on a long literary-historical legacy, emphasizing the preoccupations that have made their way from medieval and Renaissance writers into mod...(read more)

104/1

Introduction to Old English

MWF 10-11

Hwæt! Leorniað Englisc!

In this introduction to Old English, you will begin to read and write Old English from your first day in class, while also learning fundamental principles of grammar and historical language change. As you...(read more)

110/1

Medieval Literature

MWF 12-1

For more information about this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

115A/1

The English Renaissance (through the 16th Century)

MWF 3-4

For more information about this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

120/1

Literature of the Later 18th Century

TTh 2-3:30

We’ll investigate the relationship of literature to other arts in the period, particularly painting and landscape design. Our focus will be on engagements with “nature,” understood as the non-human world and the ground of culture....(read more)

166AC/1

Special Topics in American Cultures:
Race and Revision in Early America

TTh 12:30-2

In this course, we will read both historical and literary texts to explore how racial categories came into being in New World cultures and how these categories were tested, inhabited, and re-imagined by the human actors they sought to define. Our s...(read more)

190/7

Research Seminar:
Monsters, Exiles, and Outlaws in Medieval Literature

TTh 9:30-11

This course focuses on murderers, monsters, and thieves. Zombies, although not our main focus, also arise. Such figures are excluded from society and cut off from their fellow human beings, whether because they have committed an unpardonable crime ...(read more)

105/1

Anglo-Saxon England

TTh 2-3:30

“Britain, once called Albion, is an island of the ocean...” When the priest Bede set out in the early 700s to write the history of the place we now call England, he portrayed it as a new nation with a deep past, a remote corner of the ...(read more)

111/1

Chaucer

TTh 3:30-5

The course will read Chaucer's two greatest works--the Canterbury Tales (easily one of the most entertaining works and one of the most compelling works in English) and the Troilus and Criseyde (perhaps less entertaining, but ...(read more)

114A/1

English Drama to 1603

TTh 11-12:30

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

118/1

Milton

MW 10-11 + discussion sections F 10-11

Probably the most influential and famous (and, in his own time, infamous) literary figure of the seventeenth century, John Milton has been misrepresented too often...(read more)

119/1

Literature of the Restoration and the Early 18th Century

TTh 12:30-2

In an age of commercial print expansion, men and women writers negotiated the possibilities, limits, and perceived dangers of publishing. In this class, we will explore the forms and strategies writers deployed in those negotiati...(read more)

130A/1

American Literature: Before 1800

MWF 12-1

This course surveys the literatures of early America, from the tracts that envisioned the impact of British colonization to the novels that measured the after-sho...(read more)

C181/1

Digital Humanities, Visual Cultures:
Digital Travels

MWF 10-11

This course introduces tools and methods of the Digital Humanities as they can be used in studying the art and literature of the early modern period. Our focus is on how, around 1600, things were in motion: people, but also objects and ideas. By 1...(read more)

190/5

Research Seminar:
Writing a World in Crisis: Medieval and Modern

MWF 1-2

Please note the changes in the topic, book list, and courses description of this class (as of November 22).

This course looks at two distinct moments in which individual authors attempted to create encyclopedic visions in an attemp...(read more)

190/8

Research Seminar:
Literatures of the Ocean

TTh 9:30-11

In this seminar we’ll explore literary (and some non-literary) representations of life at sea and of sailors, both offshore and on, primarily but not exclusively during the expansion of Britain’s first empire during the eighteenth cent...(read more)

190/9

Research Seminar:
Beowulf

TTh 9:30-11

Beowulf is the longest, subtlest, and in many ways the strangest and most difficult Old English poem that has survived from Anglo-Saxon England. Since its rediscovery in the 18^th century, we have learned much about its language...(read more)

N166/2

Special Topics:
Arthurian Literature

MTTh 12-2

This course will be taught in Session D, from July 3 to August 10.

104/1

Introduction to Old English

MWF 10-11

Canst þu þis gewrit understandan? Want to? “Introduction to Old English” will give you the tools to read a wide variety of writings from among the earliest recorded texts in the English language. What is there to r...(read more)

110/1

Medieval Literature:
Heaven, Hell, and Fairyland: Visions of Other Worlds in Medieval British Literature

MWF 9-10

This course provides a tour of otherworld visions and journeys in the literature of medieval Britain. After looking at some foundational texts from antiquity that influenced writers up to the present day, we’ll examine the geography of the a...(read more)

115A/1

The English Renaissance (through the 16th Century)

MWF 3-4

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

166/1

Special Topics:
Aesthetics and the Environment in the Eighteenth Century

MWF 12-1

Why do we take pleasure in contemplating the natural world? What sort of pleasure is this? The eighteenth century was preoccupied with this question, which abutted on others: What is beauty? Is it something we perceive directly, or do we experienc...(read more)

170/1

Literature and the Arts:
The Deaths and Lives of Saints

MWF 11-12

The paradox of Western sainthood is summed up by a phrase from Latin calendars: dies natalis, “birthday.” Marking a saint’s chief feast, the dies natalis celebrates the day of his or her death: death as birth wi...(read more)

190/6

Research Seminar:
The Medium Is the Message: Reading Poetry in Manuscript & Print, 1300-1600

TTh 9:30-11

Modern readers almost exclusively encounter medieval and Renaissance literature in highly mediated anthologies and scholarly editions, far removed from the manuscripts and early print books in which they first circulated. In this course, we will p...(read more)

190/7

Research Seminar:
Note new topic: Troy and Tragedy

TTh 11-12:30

Note the new topic (and book list and instructor):

From the earliest moments of the western literary tradition, the story of the fall of Troy has been associated with the genre of tragedy. This course charts that association from Ancient Ro...(read more)

111/1

Chaucer

This course has been canceled.

114A/1

English Drama to 1603

This course has been canceled.

165/1

Special Topics:
Arthurian Medievalisms

MW 9-10:30

This course will focus on medievalism, i.e., the representation and conceptualization of the Middle Ages, in order to analyze how ideas about the past are used in literature and the arts, in both "high" and popular culture. The point of ...(read more)

165/4

Special Topics: Representing Non-Human Life in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Britain

TTh 12:30-2

We will explore techniques developed by scientists, theologians, and poets to represent other life forms. Contexts we’ll investigate include encounters with new-world flora and fauna, the invention of the microscope and the discovery of the ...(read more)

165/7

Special Topics:
Later 17th-Century Nonfictional Prose

TTh 6-7:30 P.M.

Reading, discussing, and writing about British prose of the later 17th century. Among the genres to be considered will be representative samples of the “character” (of places as well as human types); the essay (controversial as well as...(read more)

165/9

Special Topics:
Ovid and the English Renaissance

TTh 3:30-5

Her bosom was wrapped in smooth thin bark; her slender arms were changed to branches and her hair to leaves; her feet but now so swift were anchored fast in numb stiff roots; her face and head became the crown of a green tree. -- Ovid, Metamor...(read more)

166/2

Special Topics:
Elizabethan Renaissance: Art, Culture, and Visuality

MW 4-5:30 + discussion sections

This course has two goals: to explore visual culture and the role of visuality in renaissance England, and to develop research skills.

Elizabeth I's long reign saw a remarkable flowering of the arts. Her unique position as a female mona...(read more)

180E/1

The Epic: Legends of Troy

TTh 2-3:30

Homer’s Iliad was composed in the eighth century BCE. Both the story that it narrated (the conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans) and the particular form that the story took (the genre of the epic) would become foundational bu...(read more)

190/6

Research Seminar:
Classical and Renaissance Drama

MW 4-5:30

In a poem for the first edition of Shakespeare’s collected works, Ben Jonson expressed a characteristic ambivalence about classical drama.  On the one hand, he praised it as the standard by which all subsequent playwriting sh...(read more)

190/9

Research Seminar:
Medieval and Renaissance Lyric

TTh 2-3:30

From drinking songs and poems of seduction to works of religious meditation and devotion, the lyric reflects a variety of subjects and concerns.  This course serves as an extensive introduction to lyric poetry from the twelfth to the sixteent...(read more)

190/10

Research Seminar:
Purcell and Handel: Their Art in Setting English Texts to Music

TTh 3:30-5

In the early 1600s, in England Shakespeare was exploring new ways of creating drama through language, with music often playing an important role, but a mostly distinct one.  In those same years, in Italy Monteverdi was exploring new ways of c...(read more)

190/12

Research Seminar:
Daniel Defoe and the Rise of the 18th-Century Novel

TTh 3:30-5

Reading, discussing, and writing mainly about the fictional works of Daniel Defoe, and (depending on student interests) about contemporary writing on some of Defoe’s subjects, such as overseas commerce, colonies, and piracy; the predicaments...(read more)

104/1

Introduction to Old English

MWF 10-11

Hwæt! Leorniað Englisc!

In this all-new version of the introduction to Old English, you will begin to read and write Old English from your first day in class, while also learning fundamental principles of grammar and historical la...(read more)

115B/1

The English Renaissance (17th Century)

MWF 12-1

A survey of England's "century of revolution," focusing on relationships between literature, religion, and politics. 

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

118/1

Milton

MW 4-5:30

Intensive reading in the poetry and prose of John Milton (1608-1674), written during a period of dramatic historical change, and including the most influential single poem in the English language, Paradise Lost. Our goal is to get under t...(read more)

130A/1

American Literature:
Before 1800

This course has been canceled.

165/8

Special Topics:
Modern Medievalism: A Study of Medieval Poetry and Modern Fantasy

TTh 9:30-11

The medieval period is often swept under broad descriptors, like the "Dark Ages," and with these descriptors come equally vague notions of medieval society. One might, for example, imagine medieval society enveloped by religious hysteria...(read more)

166/1

Special Topics:
Epistles: The Letter in Life and Literature

MWF 12-1

In this course, we will explore one of the most intimate, versatile, and surprising of literary forms: (read more)

180R/1

The Romance

MW 12:30-2

Everybody thinks they know what “romance” is, but in fact the term is controversial and difficult to define. Does it mean escapist fiction with monsters and enchanters, entertaining but unbelievable? (What makes fiction believable<...(read more)

190/11

Research Seminar:
Poetry and Poetics in the Middle Ages

TTh 2-3:30

This class will explore early England's shifting literary landscape in order to better understand what poetry was and what it was for in the Middle Ages. Juxtaposing our close analyses of individual poems and groups of poems with medieval theo...(read more)

112/1

Middle English Literature

TTh 11-12:30

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

114A/1

English Drama to 1603

TTh 2-3:30

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

118/1

Milton

TTh 9:30-11

Probably the most influential and famous (sometimes infamous) literary figure of the seventeenth century, John Milton has been misrepresented too often as a mainstay of a traditional canon rather than the rebel he was. He is also sometimes assumed...(read more)

120/1

Literature of the Later 18th Century

TTh 2-3:30

Late-eighteenth-century writing shaped many of the forms and institutions of literature we now take for granted. Fiction writers worked to establish the genre—and—legitimate as worthy reading—what we now call novels, while others...(read more)

125A/1

The English Novel (Defoe through Scott)

TTh 9:30-11

This class explores eighteenth-century British innovations in narrative prose writings that we have come to call novels. A scientific revolution, broadened financial speculation, expanding empire, changing notions of gender, and new philosophies o...(read more)

125A/2

The English Novel (Defoe through Scott)

TTh 3:30-5

A survey of early fiction, much of which pretended to be anything but. Most was published anonymously and purported to be a true "History," "Expedition," or the like, about "Things as They Are." We will consider at th...(read more)

130A/1

American Literature: Before 1800

This class has been canceled.

166/1

Special Topics:
Scotland and Romanticism

MWF 11-12

Between 1760 and 1830 Scotland was one of the centers of the European-North Atlantic “Republic of Letters.” Here were invented the signature forms and discourses of the “Enlightenment” and “Romanticism” (terms f...(read more)

104/1

Introduction to Old English

MWF 11-12

Hwæt! Leorniaþ Englisc!

In this class, you will learn to read, write, and even speak the language of Beowulf. Once you have completed it, you will be able to understand—and will have read!—a wide range of te...(read more)

115A/1

The English Renaissance (through the 16th century)

MWF 3-4

In this course, we follow how English authors from Thomas More to John Donne participated in the grand cultural project of the Renaissance, defined by the belief that consuming a...(read more)

115B/1

The English Renaissance (17th century)

TTh 11-12:30

An introduction to one of the great ages of English literature (poetry, prose, and drama), focusing on works by King James I, Donne, Jonson, Herbert, Marvell, Milton, Cavendish, Hutchinson, Halkett, and Bunyan. We will discuss the relationship bet...(read more)

119/1

Literature of the Restoration & the Early 18th Century

TTh 3:30-5

The period from the "Restoration" of Charles II (1660) to the death of Alexander Pope (1744) produced the last poems of Milton, the first English pornography and feminist polemic, the most devastating satires ever written, some of the mo...(read more)

130A/1

American Literature: Before 1800

MWF 2-3

This course will offer a survey of the literature in English produced in North America before 1800: competing British versions of settlement; Puritan history, sermons, and poetry; conversion, captivity, and slave narratives; diaries, journals, ess...(read more)

165/3

Special Topics:
Greek Tragedy in Translation

TTh 12:30-2

The lectures, class discussions, readings, and writing assignments are intended to develop students' ability to analyze, understand, and evaluate a number of important ancient texts. The class will examine the deep implications of these early ...(read more)

190/1

Research Seminar:
American Captivities

MW 3-4:30

The Indian captivity narrative is the first literary genre that might be called uniquely “American.”  Its standard protagonist was a white woman kidnapped by Indians, but American captivity narratives also related the captivities ...(read more)

190/5

Research Seminar:
Paradise Lost and the Ancient Epic

TTh 11-12:30

“Not less but more heroic” … that is Milton’s claim in his modern epic Paradise Lost, comparing his own Biblical theme to the achievements of ancient epic, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Vir...(read more)

110/1

Medieval Literature:
Heaven, Hell, and Fairyland - Visions of Other Worlds

MWF 2-3

This course provides a tour of otherworld visions and journeys in the literature of medieval Britain. After looking at some foundational texts from antiquity that influenced writers up to the present day, we’ll examine the geography of the a...(read more)

111/1

Chaucer

TTh 11-12:30

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

114A/1

English Drama to 1603

TTh 2-3:30

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

118/1

Milton

TTh 3:30-5

Intensive reading in the poetry and prose of John Milton (1608-1674), written during a period of dramatic historical change, and including the most influential single poem in the English language, Paradise Lost. Our goal is to get under t...(read more)

120/1

Literature of the Later 18th Century

TTh 9:30-11

Late-eighteenth-century writing shaped many of the forms and institutions of literature we now take for granted. Fiction writers worked to establish the genre—and—legitimate as worthy reading—what we now call novels, while others...(read more)

130A/1

American Literature: Before 1800

MW 9:30-11

This course provides a survey of English-language American literature to 1800. We will explore a wide range of texts from narratives of colonial settlement through the literature of the American Revolution and the early republic. Topics to be disc...(read more)

165/1

Special Topics:
Donne: Poetry, Prose, Letters

MW 4-5:30

“I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I did, till we loved?” Fresh, intimate, vulnerable and yet tyrannical: Donne’s voice demands our full attention -- but rarely receives it. Writing between Shakespeare and Milton, Donne is the...(read more)

190/9

Research Seminar:
Literature of the Ocean

TTh 12:30-2

Provisional Book List:  William Wycherley, The Plain-Dealer; Ned Ward, The Wooden World Dissected; Daniel Defoe, Captain Singleton; Olaudah Equiano, Interesting Narrative; Tobias Smollett, Roderick Rand...(read more)

105/1

Anglo-Saxon England

TTh 2-3:30

“Britain, once called Albion, is an island of the ocean...” When the priest Bede set out in the early 700s to write the history of the place we now call England, he portrayed it as a new nation with a deep past, a remote corner of the ...(read more)

115A/1

The English Renaissance (through the 16th Century)

MWF 1-2

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

152/1

Women Writers:
Early American Women Writers

TTh 9:30-11

This course will survey the writing of American women from narratives of colonial settlement through the novels of the early republic.  During this period, women produced immensely popular works and developed major literary traditions that wo...(read more)

190/12

Research Seminar:
Metaphysical Poets from Donne to Vaughan

TTh 2-3:30

This class focuses on a group of poets who were philosophical before there was philosophy. Four decades before the publication of René Descartes’ Meditations, John Donne began writing poems in which, in the words of a later c...(read more)

114B/1

English Drama from 1603 to 1700

TTh 11-12:30

This course will be a survey of some of the best seventeenth-century English drama. We will focus on the plays as plays – as series of actions upon the minds of audiences – and on ones first performed between 1603 and 1642, when the th...(read more)

119/1

Literature of the Restoration and the Early 18th Century

TTh 12:30-2

We will explore the relationship between literature and everyday life in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Areas of emphasis include popular periodical literature (England's first advice column, the first "women's m...(read more)

120/1

Literature of the Later 18th Century

TTh 2-3:30

Late-eighteenth-century writing shaped many of the forms and institutions of literature we now take for granted. Fiction writers worked to establish the genre—and—legitimate as worthy reading—what we now call novels, while others...(read more)

125A/1

The English Novel (Defoe through Scott)

TTh 3:30-5

A survey of early fiction, much of which pretended to be anything but. Most of it, published anonymously, purported to be a true "History," "Expedition," or the like, about "Things as They Are." We will consider at th...(read more)

130B/1

American Literature: 1800-1865

TTh 12:30-2

In Beneath the American Renaissance, David Reynolds argues that “delving beneath the American Renaissance occurs in two senses: analysis of the process by which hitherto neglected popular modes and stereotypes were imported into lit...(read more)

104/1

Introduction to Old English

TTh 12:30-2

Canst þu þis gewrit understandan? Want to? “Introduction to Old English” will give you the tools to read a wide variety of writings from among the earliest recorded texts in the English language. What is there to r...(read more)

114A/1

English Drama to 1603

TTh 5-6:30

This course offers a wide-ranging survey of sixteenth-century drama up to and beyond the building of the first commercial theaters in London in the 1570s. After sampling the medieval mystery and morality traditions, we will consider the formal and...(read more)

115A/1

The English Renaissance (Through the 16th Century)

TTh 2-3:30

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

116/1

Backgrounds of English Literature in the Continental Renaissance

TTh 12:30-2

This course will survey some of the major prose writings of the continental Renaissance in their cultural and historical contexts. Various in genre, including political philosophy (Machiavelli), essays (Montaigne), and proto-novels (Rabelais and C...(read more)

130A/1

American Literature: Before 1800

MWF 1-2

(read more)

165/2

Special Topics:
The Elizabethan Renaissance

TTh 3:30-5 + one hour of disc. sec. (sec. 201: W 12-1, 2070 Valley LSB; sec. 202: W 9-10, 2066 Valley LSB)

This course has two goals: to explore visual culture and the role of visuality in renaissance England, and to develop research skills. Elizabeth I's long reign saw a remarkable flowering of the arts. Her unique position as a female monarch sur...(read more)

166/1

Special Topics:
18th-Century British Travel Writing

TTh 11-12:30

This course is based on the idea that if there is one genre in which ideas of identity--ideas of how one's own self and culture are related to other selves and other cultures--are systematically negotiated, then this must be the hybrid genre o...(read more)

190/13

Research Seminar:
Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, and the Cavalier Poets

MW 9-10:30

This seminar will focus on Jonson’s and Herrick’s verse, particularly on the openly frivolous poems. Our aim will be to come to conclusions about what these poems do that gives pleasure. We will also think about the usefulness and accu...(read more)

118/1

Milton

TTh 3:30-5

The most influential and famous (sometimes infamous) literary figure of the seventeenth century, John Milton has been misrepresented too often as a mainstay of a traditional canon, rather than the rebel he was. Or he is assumed to be a remote reli...(read more)

119/1

Augustan Age: Literature of the Restoration and the Early 18th Century

TTh 3:30-5

We will explore the relationship between literature and everyday life in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Areas of emphasis include popu...(read more)

125A/1

The English Novel (Defoe through Scott)

TTh 12:30-2

This class explores eighteenth-century British innovations in narrative prose writings that we have come to call novels. A scientific revolution, broadened financial speculation, expanding empire, changing notions of gender, and new philosophies o...(read more)

180E/1

The Epic

MWF 2-3

This course will be team-taught by Professors Altieri and Nolan. Our primary concern is to read carefully and discuss intensely most of the major epics in Western European literature. We love these texts and we are convinced that students will fin...(read more)

190/8

Research Seminar:
Medieval English Poetry

TTh 12:30-2

The poetry of medieval England, often witty, sometimes moving, occasionally shocking, and frequently creative in form, style and use of language, has inspired poets including Seamus Heaney, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Geoffrey Hill. We will be explo...(read more)

110/1

Medieval Literature

TTh 3:30-5

For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

120/1

Literature of the Later 18th Century

TTh 12:30-2

Unfamiliar to many undergraduates, eighteenth-century writing shaped many of the forms of writing and institutions of literature we now take for granted. Fiction writers worked to establish the form—and—legitimate as worthy reading&mda...(read more)

130A/1

American Literature: Before 1800

TTh 11-12:30

This course provides a survey of English-language American literature to 1800. We will explore a wide range of texts from narratives of discovery and exploration through the literature of the American Revolution and the formations of an early nati...(read more)

165/1

Special Topics:
(note new topic) Religion and Poetry in the Renaissance

TTh 11-12:30

What does it mean to speak to God through a sonnet? Why would someone retell the story of the Biblical Fall in verse? Why rewrite the Psalms in rhyme royal? In this course, we’ll do a case study of sixteenth and seventeenth cent...(read more)

166AC/1

Special Topics in American Cultures:
Race and Revision in Early America

TTh 9:30-11

In this course, we will read both historical and literary texts to explore how racial categories came into being in New World cultures and how these categories were tested, inhabited, and re-imagined by the human actors they sought to define. Our ...(read more)

190/3

Research Seminar:
The Writings of Daniel Defoe

MW 4-5:30

Reading and discussion of representative works in various genres, treating Defoe’s career and writings as of interest in themselves, and as offering direct (if slanted) access to all the major cultural issues of his day, political, economic,...(read more)

190/12

Research Seminar:
Paradise Lost, Found, Lost Again

TTh 12:30-2

An intensive reading of John Milton’s great epic Paradise Lost and two works that adapt it in imaginative ways, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. The modern an...(read more)

190/15

Research Seminar:
American Captivities

TTh 2-3:30

The captivity narrative is the first literary genre that might be called uniquely “American.” Although its standard protagonist was a white woman kidnapped by Indians, the captivity narrative genre extended to the capture of sailors an...(read more)

190/16

Research Seminar:
Chaucer and His Contexts

TTh 2-3:30

The works of Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400) have been canonized as the most important and best-known materials in Middle English literature. But Chaucer did not appear in a vacuum. On the contrary, Chaucer participated in several rich literary co...(read more)

190/17

Research Seminar:
History of the Book, 597-2011

TTh 2-3:30

In this research seminar, we will study the development of one of the most influential technologies ever created: the book. Beginning with the introduction of the manuscript codex into England, we will trace the book through many transformations: ...(read more)