LIT 3112 Fall 2019 Fumo

This course introduces English majors and minors to the most noteworthy authors, formative texts, and key imaginative traditions of British literature before 1800. Students will gain familiarity with the historical development of early English writing from the beginnings of the English language in Anglo-Saxon heroic epic; through the later medieval flourishing of courtly romance and satire; to the dazzling formal innovations of Renaissance lyric, epic, and drama; and concluding with the literary experiments of the eighteenth century as an age of progress and exploration. Students will encounter the major canonical authors of these periods (the Beowulf-poet, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Pope) as well as marginalized voices--especially female--and, toward the end of the period, transatlantic perspectives. You will learn to identify and analyze a variety of genres that are crucial to English literary tradition, and you will discover how authors imaginatively respond to their predecessors. The creative forms and major thematic investments of each era will be contextualized within the social and cultural history that shaped them.