PREVIOUSLY TAUGHT GRADUATE COURSES

English 727: Allegory and Materialism
Lezra

The relation between the mode of allegory and the philosophical problem of matter. Readings include Lucretius, De rerum natura; Prodentius, Psychomachia; Dante, Letter to Can Grande and selections from Commedia; Cervantes, selected stories; Machiavelli, Discorsi and selections from the Prince; Hobbes, Leviathan; Spinoza, selections from Tractatus and Ethics; selections from Hume, Enquiry; Marx, early writings on Democritus, Grundrisse and selections from Critique of Political Economy; Althusser, Machiavelli et nous, select essays from Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists; de Man, Aesthetic Ideology. Additional works by Fletcher, Quilligan, etc.

English 760: 16th Century Poetry & Prose (excluding Spenser) (Fall 2001)
Weiner

In English 760 we will focus on intellectual history and on English Renaissance poetic theory. More specifically, we will begin with Petrarch's positioning of himself in opposition to the fundamental scholastic beliefs about the power and primacy of reason by stressing the need for eloquence in order to transform a reader or hearer. We will follow the line from Petrarch's "On his own ignorance and that of many others" to Erasmus's "Praise of Folly" and More's "Utopia," each of which profoundly questions the adequacy of reason, but then retreats from the position in the face of Luther's rejection of free will and his declaration that "Reason is the devil's whore," considering in passing Lyly's nihilistic exploration of where the rejection of reason leaves us in "Euphues." Turning to Wyatt, all of whose poetry we will read, we will move from poems that suggest a humanist understanding of the self and the world to a Protestant one, focusing on his love poetry, his "Paraphrase of the Psalms," and his 'Satires." We will also follow his attempts to find a new function for poetry in a world that denies the freedom of the will (thereby diminishing the urgency of poetry's traditional didactic role) and denies the value of eloquence (the humanist raison d'etre). We will then turn to Gascoigne, a Protestant who fails to find a way to justify his own brilliant poetry in the face of attacks against it-and him-and ultimately gives up poetry, before we examine Sir Philip Sidney, who succeeds where Gascoigne failed and offers a Protestant Defense of Poetry. We will read all of Sidney's major texts ("Defense," "Old" and "Revised Arcadia"s, "Astrophil and Stella" and "Certain Sonnets"), which formed the fundamental canon for courtly writing for most of the next 100 years. We will also consider some of the poets who followed him, in particular Fulke Greville ("A Treatie of Humane Learning" and "Caelica"), Christopher Marlowe ("Hero and Leander"), John Marston (The Metamorphosis of Pygmalion's Image"), and William Shakespeare, whose narrative poems ("Venus and Adonis," "Lucrece") and sonnets we will consider. From this description, it should be clear that we will focus much more intently on 16th-century texts than we will on contemporary critical theory. If as a recent critic has suggested, theory justifies not taking writing on its own terms, this course will be anti-theoretical, not inappropriately perhaps in the light of the intensely intentionalistic poetics of the English Renaissance. On occasion, we will also consider Renaissance poetic and artistic theory about the nature and function of the image.

English 760, 761: Survey of Sixteenth-Century Literature, Survey of Seventeenth-Century Literature
Dubrow

A couple of other faculty members and I share these courses. The first is a survey of sixteenth-century literature and the second of seventeenth-century texts, but since I teach them in similar ways, I am describing them together. Both are designed for M.A. students with a range of interests as well as specialists in the Renaissance. These courses survey the principal texts of their periods, with the first one dealing with poetry and prose and the second encompassing drama as well. Non-canonical texts such as marriage manuals, gynecological treatises, and the literature of roguery are also included. We engage with more traditional critical methods but concentrate particularly on recent developments in early modern criticism, such as the many types of feminism and historical and political approaches. Mainly discussion, but brief (c. 10-minute mini lectures to provide background). The classes also offer training in professional skills such as writing an abstract and delivering a conference paper. Since I have been teaching a wide range of seminars, I am including descriptions of the courses I have given as samples:

Lyric Poetry (Fall 2000)

This course, which is designed both for entering M.A. students and advanced early modern specialists, will focus on sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century lyric poetry. It will survey the principal lyric texts of that period, exploring such questions as: what is lyric, and why does that question prove so tricky? How do the distinctive cultural conditions of early modern England (e.g., political and ideological changes, the transition from manuscript to print culture, religious upheavals) shape lyric in that period? In particular, how do lyric norms and constructions of gender interact? In discussing the interplay of lyric and narrative poems, we will also briefly discuss some longer poetry, such as The Faerie Queene and/or Spenser's "Epithalamion." Thus, the course will interrelate questions about genre and poetic form with cutting-edge debates about the period. Like all my courses, it will also involve advice about and discussions of preparing to enter the profession; we will, for instance, talk about how one turns a course paper into a publishable article. As this description suggests, the course is planned in order to provide M.A.s, including those who may specialize in other fields, with a broad survey of the principal poets of this field (we will explore most of the lyric texts from the periods on the M.A. Reading List) and some debates central to literary studies today. It will also be tailored to the needs of more advanced students, both Renaissance specialists in English and students in cognate disciplines, who will have somewhat different written requirements. Both groups will, however, write one long paper and some briefer written assignments (no final examination); if anyone specializing in a different field wishes to take the course, she or he can design a paper topic including writers outside the Renaissance as well as or in addition to early modern ones.

Genre and Contemporary Renaissance Criticism: Feminisms, New Historicism, Cultural Materialism

Genre, long an important concept in formalist analysis, has recently become central to feminist, materialist, and other current critical practices as well. This course will engage with the theories and workings of genre, devoting significant attention to writing on the subject by Renaissance rhetoricians though focusing mainly on recent critical debates. The class has two interwoven aims: we will deploy a number of critical approaches to study genre, and we will deploy genre as a test case to discuss the potentialities and problems of three critical approaches in particular, feminism, new historicism, and cultural studies. Much of our attention, however, will be devoted to particular literary texts; the course will include drama, poetry, and prose from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it will concentrate particularly on pastoral, romance, and the sonnet. We will also include cultural texts such as the literature of roguery and discuss some analogues to how genre operates in "high" or canonical literature--e.g., the presence of pastoral motifs in that literature and of romance conventions in twentieth-century science fiction and thrillers. Assignments will include one short exercise involving work in original, preferably archival, historical materials and a research paper that may use that historical research. Like all my courses, this one will also devote some attention to the process of professionalization (e.g., learning to turn seminar papers into articles) and to the challenges of teaching. The course is designed mainly for specialists in early modern literature; but because of its concern for critical methods and general issues of genre, it may well be of interest to students specializing in other areas, and they will be able to write their seminar paper on literature from periods other than the Renaissance.

Shakespeare (1999-2000)

Professor Susanne Wofford and I are alternating this seminar. I will concentrate particularly on feminism, gender studies, and various historical approaches (new historicism, cultural materialism, cultural studies), though some time will be given as well to recent developments in performance criticism and to stage conditions. We will read plays from all the principal genres and also probably include either the sonnets or The Rape of Lucrece as well. A sample of the many questions we will explore: to what extent and in what ways do the plays replicate and reinforce—and to what extent challenge--early modern constructions of gender? What documents from the cultural history of the period should we read together with the plays to analyze those constructions, and what are the evidentiary problems raised by deploying such cultural documents? What do the plays themselves and story telling within them suggest about the workings of narrativity? How are questions of form and style (e.g., the ways closure is variously effected in Shakespeare's genres, the uses of couplets) related to these other concerns?

Survey of English literature between 1600 and 1660

This course is designed both for MAs wanting an overview of the period and Ph.D. students concentrating in it. The reading list encompasses traditional canonical texts such as Webster's Duchess of Malfi and Marvell's Mower poems; texts by women writers, notably Wroth and Lanyer; and cultural texts (e.g., gynecological manuals, pamphlets on rogues and vagabonds). [Our literary approaches are also varied: questions about genre, feminist analyses, cultural history, discussions of manuscript culture and so on.] I aim to prepare students for many aspects of their professional lives, so the course includes a short essay on pedagogy and a mini-conference, in which students deliver versions of their class essays to each other and hence learn about delivering papers at scholarly meetings.

English 762: Renaissance Dramatic Literature: Imaginary Topographies/Early Modern Topographesis
Turner

This course focuses on London during the period of approximately 1580-1640 by examining the many different representational forms produced in the city, with a particular emphasis on the drama. Our analysis will situate itself at the intersection of literary, social, and intellectual history, approaching London as an imagined place where many overlapping communities converged uneasily: as the seat of Court and a centralizing State; as a collection of conflicting political, economic and religious identities; as an aggregate of diverse neighborhoods, buildings and environments; as a primary market center among the many smaller towns distributed throughout the British Isles or as a focal point of the emerging global economy; as the home of the bourgeois; and as the home of many “outsiders,” whether from foreign states, distant cultures, or the outlying English counties. Authors will include Cicero, Quintilian, More, Dekker, Middleton, Heywood, Jonson, Brome, and Shirley, along with assorted secondary readings on theories of space, the history of the city, and urbanism, including De Certeau, Lefebvre, Foucault, Weber, and assorted historians and critics of early modern culture. Throughout the course we will attempt to develop preliminary theoretical paradigms for the problem of topographesis, to be understood simultaneously as the way place appears through writing and discourse and the way discrete locations may be “used” or combined in a semiotic fashion to structure a variety of cultural scripts. To do so, we will draw on early modern examples of topographic writing that focus primarily on the city: its geography, institutions, and subjectivities. The course will meet once a week on Tuesdays, in two 75-minute sessions separated by a 60 minute break, which students may use for informal discussion, contemplation, or refreshment.

English 809: Milton and Marvell (Spring 2001)
Lowenstein

This seminar will study the writings of two of the outstanding political and religious poets of early modern England, writers whose careers were closely linked during the English Revolution. We will study most of the major English poetry of Milton and Marvell, as well as selections from Milton's revolutionary prose. We will examine the interactions of poetry, religion, and politics in seventeenth-century England, and we will explore the impact of the tumultuous English Revolution on the works of both poets. The course will examine aesthetic issues and generic experimentation in their works, at the same time that we consider such issues as political engagement, republicanism, and dissent in their careers and writings.

Since Marvell's poetic oeuvre is smaller than Milton's, the course will devote considerable attention to Milton's great poems. In addition, we will sample selections from Milton's early poems and major prose works to see how they illuminate his literary, political, and religious development, including his radical Puritan orientations. We will consider the following topics, among others: the evolution of Milton's prophetic sense of literary vocation before, during, and after the English Revolution; his political radicalism and theological heresies in relation to his poetry and polemical prose; his striking revision (and subversion) of the European epic tradition in both Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained ; and the challenge of writing a daring visionary epic about the Fall after the failure of the Revolution. In the second half of the course, we will consider the following questions: What impact did the Revolution have on the religious politics of the great poems? What happens in these poems to the language of radical politics and republicanism? Does the intense Puritan inwardness of his great poems, all written or published in the Restoration, preclude active engagement or dissent in the temporal world? Or do the great poems reveal a poet who chooses eternal verities over temporal politics and who, as a recent historian argues, "withdraws from politics into faith"?

This course will stress historically-informed readings of the religious and political poetry of Milton and Marvell. At times we will also sample recent critical approaches to Milton and Marvell, including scholarship which has drawn upon the new historicism, Marxist theory, work on gender and sexuality, and reader-response criticism to illuminate their poetry, lives, and age.

M.A. students, including those who have not previously studied Milton and Marvell in a detailed fashion, are most welcome to take this course.

English 956: Power & Disguise in Shakespeare & His Contemporaries
Wofford (Fall 2000)

This seminar, intended for advanced graduate students or MA students with strong background in Renaissance literature, will treat the topic of the representation of gender, sexuality and kinds of resistant subjectivity through the method of an intensive cultural exploration of texts on this topic from about 1570 to 1620. Readings will include Plato, The Symposium ; William Painter, The Palace of Pleasure (novella collection including Boccaccio, Bandello, and Marguerite de Navarre); Sidney's Arcadia; Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book III , and small selections from Book V; Shakespeare, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure and Antony and Cleopatra ; Jonson, Epicoene, Bartholomew Fair; Dekker and Middleton, The Roaring Girl ; The Hic Mulier/Haec Vir pamphlet debate; Dekker, Plague Pamphlets (selections); Dekker, The Shoemaker's Holiday . As this list should suggest, I am interested in the hermaphrodite/androgyne, and will include some theoretical and historical readings on this topic. Some selected theory on performance and performativity, on the cultural role of Neo-Platonism, on gender and subjectivity, and on the shaping of identity by rhetoric. Students will be asked to read Sidney's Arcadia over the summer. This course is not intended to introduce students to the reading of Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare or Jonson-the approach will involve close interpretation of specific sections of the works listed rather than an introduction and survey that would provide background and general knowledge.

French 645-646: French Renaissance Literature
Langer

Fictions de la cour
Novella Ethics (15th-17th centuries)
Rhétorique de la vertu à la Renaissance