Undergraduate Course: Renaissance Poetry (LLLG07049)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 7 (Year 1 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | THIS IS A FOR-CREDIT COURSE OFFERED BY THE OFFICE OF LIFELONG LEARNING (OLL); ONLY STUDENTS REGISTERED WITH OLL SHOULD BE ENROLLED.
The centrepiece of this course will be three weeks on Shakespeare's unsurpassed but difficult Sonnets (c.1594-1604). We will put Shakespeare's work in context by exploring the origins of Renaissance verse in the titanic achievements of Dante and Petrarch, the tormented soul of Michelangelo, and Shakespeare's direct precursors: the witty Sir Philip Sidney, adored across Europe as the perfect 'Renaissance Man'; and the devout Platonist Edmund Spenser. This course encompasses some of the greatest poetry ever written.
Foreign texts will be studied in translation with the original in parallel.
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| Course description |
Week 1: The Godfather of Renaissance poetry: excerpts from Dante's Inferno (c.1315)
Week 2: The birthpangs of Renaissance love-poetry: Petrarch's sonnets with translations with Sir Thomas Wyatt and other Tudor writers
Week 3: The torments of art: sonnets by Michelangelo to a beautiful young man
Week 4: Classical passions: Ronsard, the French court, and Mary Queen of Scots
Week 5: Witty, doomed love: Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella (1579)
Week 6: Courtship and marriage: Edmund Spenser's Amoretti (c.1590)
Weeks 7, 8 and 9: The greatest love poetry ever written: Shakespeare's Sonnets (c.1594-1604)
Week 10: The religious sonnet: John Donne
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
* delineate the main genres of Renaissance verse;
* analyse the use of complex language in Renaissance verse;
* situate Renaissance verse in its cultural and political context.
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Reading List
Essential
Greenblatt, S. ed., 2012. The Norton Anthology of English Literature vol. 1. New York: W. W. Norton.
Musa, M. ed., 2002. Dante, the Divine Comedy Vol. 1: The Inferno. London: Penguin.
Mortimer, A. ed., 2002. Petrarch: Canzoniere. London: Penguin.
Recommended
Norbrook, D. and Woudhuysen, H., 1993. The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse. London: Penguin.
Norbrook, D., 2002. Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance. Oxford: OUP.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Collaborative working.
Group discussion.
Composition of discursive essays.
Understanding of interpersonal relationships. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Anya Clayworth
Tel:
Email: |
Course secretary | Mrs Sabine Murdoch
Tel: (0131 6)51 1855
Email: |
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