ENGL 90235 - The Poetry of Edmund Spenser

Institution:

University of Notre Dame

Subject:

English

Description:

This graduate seminar will be an intensive study of Spense's work. We will attend to the ground-breaking The Shepheardes Calendar (1579), Amoretti and Eplithalamion (1595), and several of the shorter poems. Our main emphasis, however, will be The Faerie Queene (1590-96). The epic is a hungry form, and Spenser's version is no exception: The Faerie Queene consumes and remakes myths, saints' legends, chronicle histories, and iconographic traditions; in so doing it schools its readers in the practices not only of Renaissance allegory and imitatio but also of interpretation itself. Because of its intense, self-reflexive focus on interpretive praxis, the Faerie Queene has occupied a central place in literary criticism from C.S. Lewis to Northrop Frye to Stephen Greenblatt; the poem still serves as a laboratory for methodological innovations in literary scholarship. As Spenser's poem is encyclopedic in its range, students will gain experience not only with Spenser's work but also with the Renaissance culture it emerged from and shaped. Our readings of Spenser will therefore be contextualized with selections from authors as varied as Vergil, Petrarch, Castiglione, Plutarch, St. Paul, Jean Calvin, Ovid, John Bale, Aristotle, Thomas Malory, Walter Ralegh, Ariosto, Tasso, and Thomas Cranmer. Students will be introduced as well to major movements and emphases in Spenser scholarship in order to prepare them to contribute to ongoing conversations. Course projects will likely include short, regular response papers; a class presentation on an assigned canto from the Faerie Queene, supported by a bibliography of relevant analogues, sources, and major articles or chapters on the material in question; and an article-length 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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