Introductory description

EN121-30 Medieval to Renaissance English Literature

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Autumn term
Week 1 Introduction
Weeks 2 Chaucer, The General Prologue
Week 3 Chaucer, The Miller’s Tale and The Reeve’s Tale
Week 4 The Merchant’s Tale
Week 5 The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale
Week 7 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Week 8 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Week 9 Piers Plowman, Prologue and passus 5
Week 10 Medieval drama

Spring Term
Week 1 Introduction to the Renaissance and Reformation
Week 2 Thomas More, Utopia
Week 3 The poetry of Thomas Wyatt
Week 4 Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense of Poesy
Week 5 Astrophil and Stella
Week 7 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, bk 1 cantos 1-6
Week 8 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, bk 1 cantos 7-12
Week 9 Shakespeare’s sonnets
Week 10 Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• By the end of this module you should have: 1. Acquired skill in reading Middle English and knowledge of the structure and history of the English language;
• 2. Acquired some knowledge of Medieval English literature (especially the work of Chaucer and his contemporaries), society and culture;
• 3. Developed awareness of the forms and metres of English poetry;
• 4. Obtained some knowledge of sixteenth-century English poetry and prose and its intellectual and social context;
• 5. Improved your skills in textual analysis and essay-writing.

Indicative reading list

Andrew and Waldron (ed.) Poems of the Pearl Manuscript (Exeter)
L. D. Benson (ed.) The Riverside Chaucer (Oxford)
S. Greenblatt et al. (ed.) The Norton Anthology of English Literature. The Sixteenth Century and Early Seventeenth Century. Volume B (rev. 10th edition, Norton, 2018)
D. Aers, Community, Gender and Individual Identity: English Writing 1360-1430 (1988)
J.A. Burrow, Medieval Writers and their Work 2nd edn (Oxford, 2008)
Maurice Keen, English Society in the Later Middle Ages 1348-1500 (Penguin, 1990)
Jerry Brotton, The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2006)
S.J. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, 1980
Peter Marshall, The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2009)
J. Guy, Tudor England (Oxford, 1988)

Subject specific skills

No subject specific skills defined for this module.

Transferable skills

No transferable skills defined for this module.