Pre-1800 Literature

Course:	LIT 144 Making Love: Introduction to Renaissance Poetry
Professor:	Adhaar Desai
CRN:	90260	Schedule:	Tue Thurs 10:20 AM - 11:40 AM Olin Languages Center 118
Distributional Area:	LA Literary Analysis in English	Class cap:	18
Credits:	4

Cross-listed: Experimental Humanities

When we think about Renaissance poetry, we tend to think of the sonnet: rule-bound, blatantly artificial, and old-fashioned. The funny thing is, the poets writing in the Renaissance tried everything they could to make their poems appear as just the opposite: organic, sincere, and excitingly new. Just beneath the veneer of formal qualities like rhyme and meter, poems from the period are sensitive and probing explorations of chaos, frustration, madness, desire, and the sublime. This course focuses on the theme of love as a psychological, emotional, and political concept to examine how poets in the period fought with language in order to make poetry say things that could not be said otherwise. Our units will consider how both the concept of love and the poetic techniques used to articulate it intersect in surprising ways with political subversion, queerness, and religious doubt. Through both critical assignments and creative exercises, including engaging with digital media to better understand how the technologies of publication shape the transmission of ideas, we'll hone a deep understanding of essential aspects of poetry while we think about how it was (and still is) a tool for thought and an instrument of emotional understanding. The course covers a broad range of significant (and significantly undervalued, self-consciously strange, or flagrantly subversive) works of poetry, and will pay particular attention to poetry by women. Shakespeare, Spenser, and Donne will take their place in context alongside Thomas Wyatt, Philip and Mary Sidney, Ben Jonson, Katherine Philips, Mary Wroth, and George Herbert. This course is a Pre-1800 Literature course offering.

Course:	LIT 280 The Heroic Age
Professor:	Karen Sullivan
CRN:	90268	Schedule:	Tue Thurs 2:00 PM - 3:20 PM Olin 310
Distributional Area:	LA Literary Analysis in English	Class cap:	22
Credits:	4

Cross-listed: Medieval Studies

In this course, we will be reading the great epics and sagas of the early Middle Ages, concentrating upon northern Europe. Through these texts, we will explore the tensions between paganism and Christianity, individual glory and kingly authority, and heroism and monstrosity. Texts to be read include the Old English Beowulf; the Old Irish Táin Bó Cúailnge; the Old Norse Eddas, Saga of the Volsungs, and Egil's Saga; the Old French Song of Roland; and the Middle High German Nibelungenlied. This course is a Pre-1800 Literature course offering.