ENGL 43105 - Seminar: The Devotional Lyric

Institution:

University of Notre Dame

Subject:

English

Description:

Following the Reformation-era's massive upheavals came the greatest flowering of devotional poetry in the English language. This body of literature offers its readers the opportunity to explore questions pertaining broadly to the study of religion and literature and to the study of lyric. Early modern devotional poetry oscillates between eros and agape, private and communal modes of expression, guilt and pride, doubt and faith, evanescence and transcendence, mutability and permanence, femininity and masculinity, success and failure, and agency and helpless passivity. We'll follow devotional poets through their many oscillations and turns by combining careful close reading of the poetry with the study of relevant historical, aesthetic, and theological contexts. Students will learn to read lyric poetry skillfully and sensitively, to think carefully about relationships between lyric and religion, and to write incisively and persuasively about lyric. Our authors will likely include William Alabaster, Richard Crashaw, John Donne, George Herbert, Robert Herrick, Anne Locke, Andrew Marvell, Mary Sidney, Robert Southwell, Thomas Traherne, and Henry Vaughan; we may also read some work from earlier and later periods. There will be three major course requirements: 1). Regular short written responses to assigned readings; these will be revised and submitted at the end of the course in lieu of a final exam. 2). A poet project; for these projects each student will be assigned a writer on whom to prepare a brief biography, bibliographic information on the poetry's publication and/or circulation history, and an annotated bibliography of major scholarship. These projects will be made available to every student enrolled in the course; we'll leave the course with a wealth of information about the authors we study. 3). An 8 to 10 page focused interpretive essay on a topic of the student's choosing.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.nd.edu

Phone Number:

(574) 631-5000

Regional Accreditation:

North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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