Survey Of English Literature

AY2020/2021 Semester 1

This course covers over one thousand years of English writing, from Anglo-Saxon to Neoclassical literature. We will focus primarily on the relationship between 'form' and 'history' in seeking to understand this literature, where 'form' refers to a given text's genre or mode (e.g., 'revenge tragedy'), its linguistic and narrative characteristics, and so on, while 'history' means both material and cultural formations as these change through time. While we will engage closely with questions of traditional literary history, we will also consider how more recent ways of reading and thinking about literature'from deconstruction to queer theory' might enrich our understanding of these mostly canonical works. The course will touch upon a number of 'big' themes in English literature, with particular emphasis on the rise of individualism and the impact of the Reformation on early-modern culture and thought.