Required Texts: English Sixteenth Century Verse: An Anthology Ed. Richard Sylvester; E. M. W. Tillyard The Elizabethan World Picture

Goals: Renaissance English poetry presents a number of barriers to immediate enjoyment by modern readers. The intense artifice of the verse, the unfamiliar cultural and historic context, and the unfamiliar language (though it looks like English, for the most part) can all mitigate against a positive first encounter with a genre otherwise celebrated as perhaps the most glorious period in all of British literature. In this three-week course we will immerse ourselves in an alien culture in the profound expectation that we will emerge on December 21st (the darkest day of the year) not only with newfound knowledge, but also the sure conviction that, at least for the next six months, every day will be brighter! Readers in the class will be familiar with a new set of wonderful writers whom they might not otherwise have ever read on their own; they will be able to approach poems written half a millennium ago without fear and trembling; they will understand the foundation of poetic production from the reign of the Tudors (Henry VIII and Elizabeth I) to the Windsors (Elizabeth II).

Expectations: You must bring your anthology with you to class; it is impossible to read, discuss, and understand poetry without a text in front of you!

There will be three essays: Wednesday, December 8th (by 6 p.m.) you will submit a three-page reaction to any one of the poems we will have read to that point. Monday, December 13th (by 6 p.m.) you will submit an analysis of a Web site (or sites) that deal with some aspect of Elizabethan life (I will provide a detailed prompt to guide you). Wednesday, December 22nd you will submit an analysis of a poem or poems that applies everything you have learned in the course (that is relevant) to helping a reader to understand the poem(s).

Schedule
Wednesday December 1 John Skelton Selected Lyrics 91-104
Thursday 2 Skelton "Phyllyp Sparowe" 23-69

Monday 6 Sir Thomas Wyatt
Tuesday 7 Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Wednesday 8 Marlowe "The passionate Sheepheard" 497; Ralegh "The Nimphs Reply to the Sheepheard" 331; Gascoigne "A Sonet written in prayse of browne beautie" 261; Campion "I care not for these Ladies" 528; "Jacke and Jone, they thinke no ill" 536-7
Thursday 9 Elizabethan World Picture: 3-82; Gascoigne "Certayne notes of Instruction" 317-328; Ralegh "The passionate mans Pilgrimage" 339-341; Campion "An Howres Recreation in Musicke" 549. [Elizabethan portraits]

Monday 13 Spenser "Amoretti" 343-389
Tuesday 14 Sidney "Astrophil and Stella" 417-495
Wednesday 15 Marlowe "Hero and Leander" 497-525; Lodge "I would in rich and golden coloured raine" 555; Barnes "Jove for Europaes love took shape of Bull" 559; Spenser "Epithalamion" 392-408
Thursday 16 Elizabethan World Picture "The Cosmic Dance" 101-106; Thomas Campion 527-549; Watson "The Authour still pursuing . . ." 554; Barnfield "If Musique and sweet Poetrie agree" 575

Monday 20 Music and Elizabethan verse. [various Cds]
Tuesday 21 John Donne "A nocturnall upon S. Lucies day, Being the shortest day" (Handout); handout of seasonal poetry.