English 342-01                                                 Christopher Hodgkins

The Seventeenth Century                                         McIver 116

Spring 2002                                                                 Office Hours: MW 3:20-3:50 and by appt.

McIver 135                                                                  334-4691 (o)

MW 2-3:15                                                                  316-0463 (h)--before 10 pm

                                                                                    e-mail: cthodgki@uncg.edu

 

Objectives

 

1. To savor some of the finest writing in our language.

2. To see something of how literary men and women in early Stuart England understood their rapidly changing world.

3. To understand how this period relates to the preceding "English Renaissance" (with which it is often included), and to the "Restoration" which followed it.

4. To survey earlier seventeenth-century poetry, prose, and non-Shakespearean drama by examining some great, not-so-great, and often-neglected authors of the period.

5. To develop skill in close reading of imaginative texts, particularly shorter lyric poems, and to understand several other critical approaches to literature (e.g. historical/contextual, reader-response, ethical, and deconstructive).

6. To develop skill in critical writing and group discussion.

 

Texts

 

M. H. Abrams, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. 1, 7th edn.

Joseph Gibaldi, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 5th edn.

 

Course Schedule

 

The Lyric, I: Donne, Jonson, and Herbert

 

Week 1            1/14     Introduction to course; Donne: The Good Morrow, The Sun Rising, The Indifferent,

                        1/16     The Early Seventeenth Century, pp. 1209-20, 1231-32; Poetic Forms and        Literary Terminology, pp. 2944-53;  Donne: The Canonization, Break of                                                                         Day, The Apparition, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

 

Week 2            1/21     MLK Day--No Class

                        1/23     The Funeral, The Relic, Elegy 19. Going to Bed, Satire 3. Religion,

 

Week 3            1/28     Holy Sonnets, Good Friday, Meditations 4 & 17

                        1/30     Expostulation 19; Walton: The Life of Donne (pp. 1583-87); Carew: An Elegy Upon the Death of Donne (pp. 1656-58)

 

                        2/1       PARAPHRASE DUE 4 PM--in envelope on my office door

 

Week 4            ANNOTATIONS ROUND # 1 BEGINS

 

                        2/4       Jonson: On Something, On My First Daughter, To John Donne, On Giles and Joan, On My First Son, Inviting a Friend to Supper, To Penshurst, Song: To Celia, My Picture Left in Scotland

            2/6       Still to Be Neat, To the Memory of Shakespeare, Timber: or Discoveries, Ode to Himself; Carew: To Ben Jonson (pp. 1659-60); Herrick: His                                     Prayer to Ben Jonson (p. 1652)

 

Week 5            2/11     Herbert: The Altar, Redemption, Easter Wings,  Affliction (1), Prayer (1), Jordan (1), The Windows, Denial, Virtue, Jordan (2),

 

                        2/13     The Holdfast, The Collar, The Pulley, The Flower, The Forerunners, Death, Love (3)

 

                        2/15     DONNE PAPER DUE 4:00 PM--in envelope on my office door

 

Week 6           

 

The Jacobean Stage: Comedy and Tragedy

                       

                        2/18     London playhouse diagram, p. 2962; Jonson: Volpone, Act 1

                       

                        2/20     Volpone, Acts 2-3

 

Week 7            2/25     Volpone, Acts 4-5

 

                        2/27     The Duchess of Malfi, Acts 1-2

 

Week 8            3/4       The Duchess of Malfi, Acts 3-5

                       

                        3/6       Midterm Exam 

 

Week 9            3/11, 3/13 Fall Break--No Class

                                   

 

Week 10         

 

The Lyric, II: Heirs of Donne, Jonson, and Herbert

                       

                        ANNOTATIONS ROUND #2 BEGINS

 

                        3/18     The Early Seventeenth Century, pp. 1220-30

                                    Carew: A Song, A Rapture; Suckling: Song, Loving and Beloved, Out Upon It!; Lovelace: To Lucasta, Love Made in the First Age; 

                                    Herrick: The Argument, Upon the Loss, The Vine,

                        3/20     Herrick: Delight in Disorder, His Farewell to Sack, Corinna's Going A-Maying, To the Virgins, Upon the Nipples, To Blossoms,

                                    Upon Jack and Jill, Upon His Verses, His Return to London,

 

Week 11          3/25     Upon Julia's Clothes, Upon Prue His Maid, To His Book's End

                                    Crashaw: To the Infant Martyrs, On the Wounds, To the Noblest and Best of Ladies, The Flaming Heart; Vaughan: Regeneration, The Retreat, The World

                        3/27     Traherne: Wonder, On Leaping Over the Moon; Philips: On the Death of My First and Dearest Child

                                    Marvell: The Coronet, Bermudas, To His Coy Mistress

 

Week 12          4/1       Marvell: The Definition of Love, The Mower Against Gardens, Damon the Mower, The Mower's Song, The Garden, An Horation Ode

Other Lyric Voices

 

                        4/3       Lanyer: Eve's Apology, Description of Cooke-ham;

                                    Wroth: Pamphilia to Amphilanthus 1, 16, 40, 74, 77

 

Week 13         

 

Some Stuart Prose

 

                        4/8       Bacon: Of Truth, Of Marriage, Of Great Place;  Browne: Religio Medici; Hobbes: Leviathan; Halkett: Memoirs;

                                    Cavendish: The Description of a New World

                        4/10     Hutchinson: Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson; Bunyan: The Pilgrim's Progress

 

Week 14         

 

Milton: Sui Generis

 

                        4/15     On Shakespeare, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso

                        4/17     Lycidas

 

Week 15          4/22     Sonnets: How Soon Hath Time, To the Lord General Cromwell, When I Consider

                                    Prose: Areopagitica

                        4/24     Paradise Lost, Book 1

 

Week 16          4/29     Paradise Lost, Book 2; Book 4.1-775

                        5/1       Paradise Lost, Book 8.521-650; Book 9

 

                                    Course Evaluations

 

Week 17          5/6       Paradise Lost, Book 10.414-584; 12.285-649

 

 

FINAL            Monday, May 13, 12-3 pm--No Exceptions

 

Course Requirements

 

Attendance and Participation: Consistent attendance is mandatory. Regular and active participation in class discussion will raise your course grade. More than two unexcused absences will directly lower your course grade, and a pattern of unexcused absences will cause you to be dropped from the course. Attendance will be taken daily, and no absence will be excused without advance notice. Two unexcused tardies will equal one absence.

 

Reading Quizzes: About ten times during the semester I will begin class with an unannounced 10-point reading quiz covering the day's assigned work(s) and accompanying materials from the anthology. These are my way of checking your comprehension of the material, and will not figure directly into your course grade. However, in borderline cases, a pattern of high or low quiz scores will affect your course grade positively or negatively.

Paraphrase (due 2/1): A modern prose version--in your own words--of the Donne poem which you have chosen to write on for the Donne Paper (see below). Include also a list of the words and phrases used figuratively. Typed, double-spaced, about 250 words (one page, not including list of figurative expressions).

Donne Paper (due 2/15): Choose any Donne poem in our text that is not on the syllabus, and in 2-3 pages (500-750 words) explain its meaning by commenting closely on its use of figurative language, particularly of any "conceits," to convey its themes. The analysis is to be entirely your own; you are to do no research for this one outside our textbook's notes.

 

Annotations: Two sets of one-page critical annotations (typed, single-spaced) are required. One set will be due during the second third of the semester, and one set during the third. You will sign up for individual due dates, which will be determined by the dates for discussing particular course readings. Each annotation assignment requires that you choose one of our readings (or a significant section if it is a longer work), search the library for 2 academic journal articles discussing that work, and submit a one-page annotation for each critical source that you discover. Each annotation must (a) begin with the basic bibliographical information about each source in correct MLA citation style (see MLA Handbook, required for this course); then (b) it must summarize the critic's interpretive argument; and finally (c) it must assess whether the article makes a worthwhile contribution to our understanding and appreciation of its subject, and why (or why not). I prefer annotation sets which referee conflicting interpretations of a work, thus displaying your powers of discernment. Not infrequently, I will call on annotators to share their researches and insights with the class, so come prepared on your assigned day. Unexcused absence on the assigned day will lower the annotation grade a full letter.

 

Late Papers: Late papers will drop a full letter grade per week-day. However, if you know that a major difficulty is coming up and you'll need more time, come see me well in advance.

Plagiarism:  You are expected to abide by the UNCG academic honor policy on all work.  Plagiarism involves any situation in which another's work (whether their ideas or their actual words) is submitted as your own.  A first offense may result in an F on that assignment, while repeated offenses can cause you to be expelled from the University.  If you are unsure about how to give credit to your sources, see the MLA Handbook or come talk to me.

 

Exams: Two exams--one at midterm (3/6) and one at the scheduled final time (5/13, 12-3 pm)--will cover the first and second halves of the semester, respectively, with more weight on the final. Exams will be mainly essay questions, with some short-answer definition and identification questions. Dates and times of both the midterm and the final exams are firm. If you know now that you cannot attend one or the other exam as scheduled, you should not take this class.

 

Grading: I will grade on a straight percentage scale, as follows:

A     100-94     C+       79-77        D-     63-60

A-      93-90    C         76-74        F       59-0

B+     89-87     C-        73-70

B       86-84     D+       69-67

B-      83-80     D         66-64

Your assignments count in the following ways:

 

Paraphrase: 5%

Donne Paper : 15%

Annotation # 1: 15%

Annotation # 2: 20%

Midterm Exam: 20%

Final Exam: 25%

Plus or minus consideration of attendance, participation, and reading quizzes.

A word on the reading--I expect you to read all relevant introductions and footnotes as well as the texts themselves, and I will sometimes begin class with a five-point reading quiz. I recommend that, as much as possible, you read the texts before the accompanying materials, forming your own impressions and asking your own questions before listening to the "experts" (me included). Also, don't expect to breeze through the readings. While not heavy in terms of pages, most of this material is not what the typical late twentieth-century person finds reader-friendly. It is fairly dense stuff, or fairly rich, depending on how you look at it. Chew well. Give yourself plenty of time to digest.

 

 

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