EL4050:06
Renaissance Literature
Townsville, Cairns
HECS Band 1
26 hours seminars. Full year internal study mode (Townsville campus); flexible delivery (teletutorial to Cairns) (Cairns campus).
Available to students in the level 4 English Honours course.
Staff: Dr C Taylor.
Students read selected drama produced in England between 1586 and 1630, together with shorter poems from the same period. Recent theoretical approaches to the literature are investigated and applied as appropriate. Attention is paid to the cultural context of the poetry, the social context of the plays and to relevant modes of theatrical production. Representative Elizabethan and Jacobean plays include Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness, Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi and Middleton’s The Changeling. The poets selected for study are Marlowe, Spenser, Sidney, Jonson and Donne.
Learning Objectives:
- acquire an understanding of the English Renaissance as an historical and cultural period;
- acquire a detailed knowledge of the set texts and an understanding of their critical reception;
- appreciate the dramatic and poetic qualities of the set texts;
- read selected drama by Shakespeare’s contemporaries, so as to provide a context for understanding Shakespeare’s plays;
- understand and apply critical theories relevant to English Renaissance drama and poetry;
- trace the evolution of lyrical and other poetry in Shakespeare’s time and historical factors impacting on this evolution.
Assessment by seminar paper (40%); seminar participation (20%); examination (40%).