Literatures on the British Isles 1: From the Renaissance to the Restoration (lecture)
Topic outline
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OBJECTIVES
LECTURE
The series of lectures focuses on the origins and development of English early modern literature (poetry, prose, drama) from approximately the late fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century. It includes an explanation of the growth of humanism, print and theatre culture, and the religious controversies of the time. Shakespeare’s plays and those of his predecessors and successors are analysed in some detail. The latter part of the series includes the main writers of the mid- to late-seventeenth century, such as Milton and the Restoration satirists. The principal objective is not only to survey the main trends but to explain them in their historical, literary and cultural contexts.Attendance at the lecture is not required but highly recommended, as it enables students to acquire a comprehensive perspective on the texts studied in detail in the seminars. As part of the three semester cycle of lectures Literatures on the British Isles I – III, it also contributes to an overall picture of British literature.
SCHEDULE
WEEK 1. 3.10. (Helena Znojemská)
Manuscript to bookprint
Literature in medieval manuscript culture: recap. Late manuscript culture, text as commodity: scribal workshops, new manuscript formats (booklet). Late medieval literature: towards synthesis – collections, compilations, compendia. Brut; Malory's Morte d’Arthur; Lydgate; Gower; Chaucer. Caxton's early prints – thematic and generic range. Caxton as translator and editor: Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, Eneydos, Malory's Morte d’Arthur. Caxton and the idea of English literary canon.WEEK 2. 10.10. (Helena Znojemská)
Poetry.
“Private” and “public” genres; manuscript circulation and print; literary “circles” and patronage. Hierarchy of genres. The sonnet and the epic. The sonnet: early translations, formal experiments, transformations of the Petrarchan model - Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Spenser. The epic: classical and continental models. Translations: Surrey, Chapman. Spenser's “programmatic” works: The Shepheardes Calender, The Faerie Queene.WEEK 3. 17.10. NO CLASS
WEEK 4. 24.10. (Martin Procházka)
Humanism and Renaissance Prose
Introduction to European Humanism (Italy and Transalpine Movements). Erasmus of Rotterdam and Sir Thomas More. Utopia. The importance of translation: religious and secular. Rhetoric (George Puttenham), Euphuism (John Lyly, George Petty, William Painter) and defence of poetry against Puritan critics (Sir Philip Sidney). Beginnings of novel, pastoral novel (Sidney’s Arcadia). Book marketing. Pamphlets and pamphlet wars.WEEK 5. 31.10. (Soňa Nováková)
Development of English Drama and Tudor Experimentation
Origins in Christian religion (tropes, miracle, mystery plays). Allegory and the roots of comedy in morality plays (e.g. Everyman) and interludes. The heritage of Ancient Greek and Roman drama (Terence, Plautus, Seneca). Drama as part of the humanist education practice. Bridge between medieval religio-allegorical drama and the secular and realistic themes of the Elizabethan era (Henry Medwall, John Heywood, John Bale, Thomas Sackville). The first tragedy (Gorboduc). The first chronicle play (King John). The first comedy (Ralph Roister Doister). Shakespeare’s predecessors: Thomas Kyd (developing the revenge tragedy) and the University Wits (John Lyly’s court drama; Christopher Marlowe’s titanic heroes; Robert Greene and George Peele). The Elizabethan theatre: public and private theatres, acting companies, staging.WEEK 6. 7.11. NO CLASS
WEEK 7. 14.11. (Soňa Nováková)
Shakespearean comedy and romance
Conventions of Elizabethan comedy. Literary sources and Roman influence. Elementary typology (e.g. city comedy, romantic comedy). Shakespeare’s transformations from the Plautus inspired Comedy of Errors and the complexities of Love’s Labour’s Lost to the typical romantic comedies of Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, As You Like It and later to the dark comedies (problem plays) as Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well. Origins of comedy in fertility rituals, carnivals and crossdressing. Relating concepts of romantic and festive comedies. Romance as a dramatic genre: tragicomedy, ideas of space and time (the late plays, e.g. The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest).WEEK 8. 21.11. (Martin Procházka)
Shakespeare’s Tragedies
Transformations of the sources: Senecan Tragedy, Tragedy of Revenge, Moralities (Titus Andronicus, Richard III). Problems of Tragedy under Christianity. New Concepts of Tragedy: love tragedy (Romeo and Juliet, Othello), tragedy of Renaissance intellect (Hamlet), tragedy of monarchy/state (Macbeth, King Lear). Tragedies in a historical setting: love tragedy (Antony and Cleopatra), tragedy of state (Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens – also tragedy of intellect).
WEEK 9. 28.11. (Helena Znojemská)
History plays.
Holinshed's Chronicles and the genre of chronicle play in context. Fashioning history. Henry VI to Henry V: from an account of the past to an analysis of the technology of power. Richard II, Henry V and rhetoric of kingship. “I am Richard II; know ye not that?”: the history plays and English politics.WEEK 10. 5.12. (Martin Procházka)
Drama of Shakespeare’s Contemporaries and Successors
Ben Jonson and his project of Theatre: royal authority and popular education. Court masque. Bartholomew Fair, Volpone. Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton – other versions of city comedy (The Shoemaker’s Holiday, A Chaste Maid of Cheapside), Jacobean tragedy, tragicomedy and comedy (John Webster, Philip Massinger, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher), Caroline drama (John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck).WEEK 11. 12.12. (Martin Procházka)
The House Divided: Versions of Religious Poetry and Puritan Prose
Downfall of the Traditional Cosmic Order and Metaphysical Poetry (John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Richard Crashaw). Figurative Language and Religious Doctrine. Predestination and Other Doctrinary Roots of Puritanism. Puritan Introspection: Autobiography and Allegory (John Bunyan).WEEK 12. 19.12. (Helena Znojemská)
Milton
Classical studies and the Italian experience. Milton's Protestant theology, Civil War engagement and political writings. Areopagitica. Transformation of the epic - from Arthuriad and Adam Unparadised to Paradise Lost: epic conventions; rhetoric; politics and theology; the issue of the hero and elements of drama. Paradise Regained. Milton's dramatic pieces: Comus and Samson Agonistes.WEEK 13. 2.1.2024. (Soňa Nováková)
Restoration Drama
Re-opening the theatres. The stage, acting, audience. Main new dramatic forms: heroic drama (couplet, blankverse, exotic, yet related to contemporary politics; John Dryden, Thomas Otway) and comedy (Restoration comedy and comedy of manners). Two generations of writers (Etherege, Wycherley; Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Congreve). Objects of satire, characterisation (types, e.g. gallant, beau, fop; strong female heroine), language, difference between the comedy of humours and the comedy of manners. The first professional woman playwright: Aphra Behn (complicating the heroic Cavalier myth; early novel).WEEK 14. 9.1.2024 (Soňa Nováková)
Restoration Poetry
Pre-Restoration Cavalier Poetry (limitation of the emotional lyric; seduction poems, carpe diem, song in Robert Herrick, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, Richard Lovelace). Restoration satire: anti-Puritan burlesque in Samuel Butler’s Hudibras; movement away from heroics and idealism to a more cynical attitude and mockery in the libertine poetry of Sir John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester; the significance of John Dryden (dramatic/literary theory, literary satire, political allegory).
MATERIAL
Recommended Reading for the Whole Course- J. Bate, The Genius of Shakespeare
- A. Bejblík, J. Hornát, M. Lukeš, Alžbětinské divadlo I: Shakespearovi předchůdci (Praha: Odeon, 1978)
- A. Bejblík, J. Hornát, M. Lukeš Alžbětinské divadlo II: Shakespearovi současníci (Praha: Odeon, 1980)
- A. Bejblík, J. Hornát, M. Lukeš Alžbětinské divadlo III: Drama po Shakespearovi (Praha: Odeon, 1985)
- D. Bevington, From Mankind to Marlowe
- Patrick Cheney, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe (CUP, 2006)
- Thomas N. Corns, ed. The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell (CUP, 1993)
- Margreta De Grazia and Stanley Wells, eds. The New Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare (Cambridge: CUP, 2011).
- Richard Harp, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Ben Jonson (CUP, 2006)
- M. Hilský, J. Marek, a kol. Dějiny anglické literatury (Praha: SPN, 1988)
- A. F. Kinney, ed., The Cambridge Companion the English Lit 1500-1600 (Cambridge: CUP, 2001)
- Jill Levenson and Robert Ormsby, eds. The Shakespearean World (London: Routledge, 2016)
- M. Procházka, Z. Stříbrný (eds.), Slovník spisovatelů: Anglie, Afrika, Austrálie, Indie, Irsko, Kanada, Karibská oblast, Nový Zéland, Skotsko, Wales, 2nd ed. (Libri 2003) (introductory essays and entries on major writers)
- G. Sanders, The Short Oxford History of English Literature, 2nd ed. (Oxford 2002)
- Z. Stříbrný, Dějiny anglické literatury (Praha: Academia, 1987)
- Stephen N. Zwicker, ed., The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1650-1740 (Cambridge: CUP, 1998) (esp. chapters on theatre culture, Milton, Dryden, Rochester and Behn)
Also recommended is The Norton Anthology to English Literature, volume 1 (esp. introductory chapters and information on individual writers)
ASSESSMENT
Attending the lecture series in LBI I does not result in any credit points. It is part of a set of courses in LBI I-III (lectures and compulsory seminars) which are concluded by a cumulative examination after the entire Literatures on the British Isles I – III series (i.e. after obtaining credit for the seminar in Literatures on the British Isles III: Modernism to the Present). For the specific seminar requirements see the syllabi of the individual seminar courses.