Ron Strickland
English 214: Sixteenth Century English Literature
Fall 1997
Office: Stevenson 404
Phone: 438-7907
E-mail: rlstrick@ilstu.edu
Office Hours: 9:00-10:00 MTW
WWW URL: http://138.87.151.50/English/Strickland/welcome.html
Required Texts:
Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction
Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800
Edmund Spenser’s Poetry
Susan Frye, Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation
Reserve Texts:
Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning
Michael Spiller, The Development of the Sonnet
Bradshaw, et al, Representing Ireland
Anderson, et al, Spenser’s Life and the Subject of Biography
Burt and Archer, Enclosure Acts
Lauren Silberman, Transforming Desire . . . in The Fairie Queene
Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays
W. Hamlin, The Image of America in Montaigne, Spenser & Shakespeare
Keith Busby, Word and Image in Arthurian Literature
Terry Eagleton, "The Subject of Literature"
Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood
Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth
Sheila Cavenagh, “Nightmares of Desire: Evil Women in The Fairie Queene”
Antony Easthope, Poetry as Discourse
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic
David Norbrooke, Politics and Poetry in the English Renaissance
John King, English Reformation Literature
Others, TBA
Course Description
This course will focus on the problem of subjectivity and self-representation in early modern English
culture. If the Renaissance saw "the rise of individualism" as the hegemonic form of subjectivity in
European society, our programs of literary study continue to valorize and protect the concept of
individualism without adequately critiquing it. A number of scholars have called attention to the role
that university courses in English literature (particularly in the traditional practice of close reading) play
in positioning, or, in Louis Althusser's term "interpellating," individual students as liberal humanist
subjects, properly responsible to the dominant social order of late industrial capitalism (see Terry
Eagleton, “The Subject of Literature,” on reserve). The student/subject is produced as a "self-
determined individual," but the limitations of this "individualism" are clearly revealed from the fact
that it must be produced. Part of my agenda for this class is to investigate the conditions and origins
of this individualist, liberal humanist subjectivity in the texts of the sixteenth century and to
interrogate what I take to be the complicity of literary studies in reproducing that mode of subjectivity
in contemporary American society. To this end, our reading of canonical literary texts of the sixteenth
century will be augmented by several readings and videos chosen to provide historical and theoretical
contexts for the literature. In particular, I have focused on the self-representational strategies
deployed by Queen Elizabeth I and on the ways literary texts of the period participated in the
construction of Elizabeth’s public image as instances in which the unevenly completed transition from
feudal, communal subjectivity to modern individual subjectivity can be seen in process.
Assignments and Grading Formula:
First paper (6-8 pages) ................................……............... 35%
Final paper (6-8 pages) .....….............................................35%
Final Exam …………...........................................................10%
Class participation & e-mail micro-essay...............................20%
Reading and Discussion Schedule:
8/18
Introduction; Establishing E-mail Accounts
Theoretical Contexts
8/20
Eagleton, Introduction; “What is Literature?”
Eagleton, “The Subject of Literature”
8/22
Eagleton, Chapter 1: “The Rise of English”
8/25
Eagleton, Chapter 3: “Structuralism and Semiotics”
1st Micro-essay Due
8/27
In-class Video: The Day the Universe Changed
8/29
Eagleton, Chapter 4: “Poststructuralism”
9/1
Labor Day Holiday
9/3
Eagleton, Chater 4: “Poststructuralism”
2nd Micro-essay Due
9/5
Eagleton, Chapter 5: “Psychoanalysis”
Historical Contexts: Humanism and Individualism
9/8
Frank Kermode, “Introduction” from The Literature of Renaissance England
(handout)
In-class Video: The Renaissance
9/10
Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800,
Chapter 3
9/12
Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800,
Chapter 5
The Sonnet Tradition and the Rise of Individualism
9/15
Sonnets from Tottel’s Miscellany—Henry Howard, Sir Thomas Wyatt
(handout)
9/17
Sonnets from Tottel’s Miscellany—Henry Howard, Sir Thomas Wyatt
(handout)
9/19
Sir Philip Sidney, sonnets from Astrophel and Stella (handout)
9/22
William Shakespeare, selected sonnets (handout)
9/24
John Donne, "The Canonization," "The Sun Rising" (handout)
Religion and the Rise of Individualism
9/26
Keith Thomas, from Religion and the Decline of Magic (reserve)
John Foxe, from Acts and Monuments, (handout)
9/29
Tyndale and others, selections from the English Bible, (handout)
Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, ch. 2 (reserve)
10/1
Hugh Latimer, “Sermon of the Plow” (handout)
William Baldwin, “Funerals of King Edward the Syxt” (handout)
10/3
No class
10/5
Amelia Lanyer, “Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum” (handout)
10/8
First Formal Essay Due
Elizabethan Ideology
10/10
Susan Frye, from Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation
In-class Video: Elizabeth I: The Marriage Game
10/13
Susan Frye, from Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation
In-class Video: Elizabeth I: The Shadow in the Sun
10/15
Susan Frye, from Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation
In-class Video: Elizabeth I: The Enterprise of England
10/17
Susan Frye, from Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation
The Fairie Queene
10/20
Spenser, The Fairie Queene, Book I
10/22
Spenser, The Fairie Queene, Book I
10/24
Spenser, The Fairie Queene, Book I
10/27
Spenser, The Fairie Queene, Book I
10/29
Spenser, The Fairie Queene, Book II
4rd Micro-essay Due
10/31
Spenser, The Fairie Queene, Book II
Spenser, The Fairie Queene, Book II
11/3
11/5
Spenser, The Fairie Queene, Book II
11/7
Spenser, The Fairie Queene, Book III
11/10
Spenser, The Fairie Queene, Book III
11/12
Spenser, The Fairie Queene, Book III
Nationalism and Colonial Adventurism
11/14
Excerpt tba, from Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood (reserve)
John Donne, Elegy XIX (“To His Mistress Going to Bed”)
11/17
Thomas Harriot, from A Briefe and True Report (handout)
Sir Francis Drake, from Drake’s Account (handout)
11/19
Sir Thomas More, from Utopia (handout)
11/21
Sir Thomas More, from Utopia (handout)
11/24
Edmund Spenser, A View of the Present State of Ireland (web link)
Lisa Jardine, “Encountering Ireland,” from Bradshaw, et al (reserve)
11/26
Thanksgiving Vacation
11/28
Thanksgiving Vacation
12/1
Leo Africanus, from The Geographical Description of Africa (handout)
5th Micro-essay Due
12/3
Leo Africanus, from The Geographical Description of Africa (handout)
12/5
Final Exam
12/14
Final Paper Due