Literature in English to the 18th Century
Term 1
MWF, 12:00 p.m.
This course focuses on selected English writers of poetry, drama, and prose from the 14th to the early 18th centuries. The following literature will be studied: The General Prologue in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night; poems by John Donne; selections from John Milton’s Paradise Lost; Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko; Part 4 of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Class discussion of each work will sometimes focus on its treatment of social, political, and economic issues of the period in which it was written: for instance, the alleged corruption of the late medieval Church and the questioning of conventional gender roles in the early modern period.
Texts:
- Joseph Black et al., eds., The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Concise Edition, Volume A, Second Edition (The Medieval Period, The Renaissance and the Early Seventeenth Century, The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century)
- William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (Broadview)The texts will be available at the UBC Bookstore in a specially priced, shrink-wrapped package.
Course requirements:
Quiz #1 – 20%
Quiz #2 – 20%
Home essay; 1500 words – 30%
Final examination – 30%
