UPCOMING UNDERGRADUATE COURSES (Fall 2003, Spring 2004)

English 417: Shakespeare: The Early Plays
Turner

This course offers intensive study of six plays from the first half of Shakespeare’s career, examining them in relation to their generic, intellectual, and historical context. Some attention will also be paid to “material form”: the plays as they existed during the period in different print formats and in performance. The course will emphasize the skills necessary to close reading and analysis and to the expression of complex ideas in a precise and elegant way. We will read the following plays Richard III, 1 Henry IV, Henry V, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and The Merchant of Venice. Requirements include two papers, an in-class midterm, a take-home final, and weekly critical observations, quizzes, or brief critical exercises. Class will be run as discussion, with occasional mini-lectures; students will be expected to have read the plays closely and to participate vigorously in discussing the works.

English 215: English Literature Before 1800
Turner

This course will introduce students to the literature of the late medieval, Renaissance, and Restoration periods, with an emphasis on the conventions of poetry. Class discussion will focus on questions of formal technique and literary structure, always with an eye to the way form helps determine the ideas that the works make available to us. We will broadly consider historical context and theoretical paradigms; the primary focus of the course, however, will be on developing the critical techniques necessary to achieve a subtle reading of literary texts and the writing skills necessary to the eloquent and original expression of ideas. The course will be run in lecture format, with separate discussion sections; students will be expected to have read the assignments in their entirety before coming to lecture and to participate vigorously in discussion.