English 230 - Literary Eras:British

Institution:

St Olaf College

Subject:

Description:

These courses treat specific periods in British literature and examine the relationship between literary texts and movements and their particular cultural, political, and historical contexts. Each offering of this course examines a different literary era and emphasizes specific literary and historical issues. Students may register for the course more than once provided a different era is studied. Prerequisite: FYW or equivalent. The Middle Ages focuses upon Anglo-Saxon and Middle English literature, including the Beowulf poet, Chaucer, Julian of Norwich, and Malory, in the context of emerging ideas such as heroism, the role of women, and the relationship between secular society and the Church. The Renaissance examines radical literary changes in English literature, as they occur in Spenser, Shakespeare, Lanyer, Donne, and Milton, in such contexts as the Protestant Reformation and strife over Puritanism, court politics under Elizabeth and James, and the English Civil War. The Age of Enlightenment focuses upon neoclassical poetry and satire and the emergence of the novel. Writers such as Dryden, Behn, Swift, Pope, and Fielding are read in the context of political and social revolutions, the African slave trade, and the growth of modern capitalism. The Romantic Period considers the outburst of literary creativity in such poets as Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats and such prose writers as Wollstonecraft, Scott, Austen, and Mary Shelley, in the context of revolutionary politics, encounters with nature and the rise of industrialized, consumer capitalism. The Victorian Period, a time of British political and cultural dominance, examines the work of such writers as Tennyson, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dickens, and the Bront s, in the context of scientific, industrial and colonial growth, religious skepticism, and challenges to class and gender inequalities. Modern British Literature focuses on the literature reflecting modern turbulence, innovation, and alienation, as in Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf, and Eliot, in the context of World War, social and economic crises, and radical artistic experimentalism.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.stolaf.edu

Phone Number:

(507) 786-2222

Regional Accreditation:

North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Four-one-four plan

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