English 217 - The English Renais

English 217 - The English Renaissance: Representations of Elizabeth I

Professor Adrienne L. Eastwood

Mondays, 4:00-6:45 p.m., Health Building, 405

Office Hours and Location: Faculty Office Building, Room 116

Hours: Tuesdays, 12:30 – 2:30 pm, Wednesdays 1:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. I am also available by appointment.

Phone #: 924-4509

Web page: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/eastwood/

Course Description: Elizabeth I had an enormous impact on early modern English culture. Although she proved herself a capable, efficient, and politically shrewd monarch, Elizabeth’s reign was fraught with struggles and tensions due to her status as unmarried (and therefore heirless), female ruler in an emergently patriarchal culture. This seminar provides students with the opportunity to explore representations of this fascinating and controversial figure in a variety of early modern texts. Students will examine and discuss the deft manner in which the Virgin Queen represented herself to her people in her speeches, portraits, and court entertainments, analyzing the ways in which she turned her culture’s assumptions about gender to her advantage (or was unable to do so as was sometimes the case). We will also explore the more complex ways in which Elizabeth I was represented by the major poets and playwrights of her day including Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, and William Shakespeare. Secondary texts will include biographical material, some historical essays, and a variety of criticism on the topic of Elizabeth’s representation.

Course Objectives: The primary goal of this course is to give you the opportunity to read, study, and discuss a number of canonical and non-canonical texts from the Elizabethan era. You will be working within the mode of a new historicist critical methodology—one that uses both historical information and an assortment of cultural artifacts to arrive at a nuanced sense of the political, social, and psychological complexities of the culture under study.

Required Texts:.

Course Reader (available from Maple Press)

Haigh, Christopher. Elizabeth I. Second Edition. Longman, 1998.

Shakespeare. Love’s Labour’s Lost. Oxford World’s Classics.*

Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Oxford World’s Classics.*

Sidney, Philip. The Old Arcadia. Oxford World’s Classics

Spenser, Edmund, The Faerie Queene. Edited by A. C. Hamilton. Longman. 2^nd Edition.

Frye, Susan. Elizabeth I. The Competition for Representation.

Elizabeth I. Collected Works. Ed. Leah Marcus and Mary Beth Rose.

*Any scholarly version of Shakespeare’s playtexts will do.

On Reserve: I will be placing several secondary texts on reserve for your use. A list of these readings will be supplied during the first few weeks of class.

Course Requirements: This is a seminar, and as such, each of us is responsible for the quality and usefulness of our meetings. I expect that you will find the readings both interesting and valuable, and I encourage you to express and explore your particular interests as we work through the material.

Discussion Leaders: To help encourage active participation, I require at least one student per week (depending on the number of students in the class) to be responsible for leading that week’s discussion. A sign-up sheet will be provided the first few weeks for you to select the works and issues that you are the most interested in. If there are several readings one week, select two on which to place the most focus. During your assigned week, you should prepare a brief presentation of the material (or of a particular aspect of the readings), and then pose provocative questions and possible answers for the class to evaluate and discuss. In essence, you will be the “expert” on the readings for that week, and you should be prepared to make connections for the group and encourage the class to respond.

Internet Posting: As I struggle to embrace the technology of the 21^st century, I have decided to set up a list-serv (“earlymods”) for this course and require you to post informal weekly responses on the site. To subscribe, click on the following URL: http://lists.sjsu.edu/lists&+earlymods and then fill in your name and full email address. Then, beginning with next week’s readings, you will post a weekly response to this list by no later than midnight on the Sunday before class. This should give everyone (especially those leading the discussion that week) a chance to look over your readings and have some idea of what everyone is interested in. Let me stress here that this is not intended to be an overwhelming burden. Rather, it is intended to provide you with a forum to discuss what you read and get a sense of the interests of the group.

Written Work: You will be asked to write one 15-20 page scholarly essay for this class, using both primary and secondary texts. This essay will allow you to more thoroughly develop a line of thinking inspired by the reading and discussions. Your success on this paper will be directly proportional to your knowledge and understanding of the texts.

Grading Breakdown:

Contribution and Participation 15%

Presentation 15%

Weekly Postings 15%

Seminar Paper 55%

Academic Integrity: Using another scholar’s words or ideas without proper documentation is plagiarism. It is SJSU’s policy to respond to any act of plagiarism by: failing the student on the assignment, possibly failing the student in the course, and considering the dismissal of the student from the university.

If you have any questions about when or how to document a source, do not hesitate to ask me for clarification. The SJSU library has an on-line tutorial on plagiarism that you can access at http://tutorials.sjlibrary.org/plagiarism/index.htm.

Schedule of Readings (Subject to Revision)

Week Zero Introduction to the course. Elizabeth’s family, life, and times.

Aug. 24 Portraits of the Tudor succession

Elizabeth R. Film clips

Recommended Viewing: Masterpiece Theatre series Elizabeth R (with Glenda Jackson).

Week 1 Accession and the Early Years.

Aug. 31 The Queen’s Progress (Reader)

Haigh, Intro and Chapter 1 (1-30)

Susan Frye, Intro and Chapter 1 (3-55)

Week 2 Labor Day

Sept. 7 Campus Closed

Week 3 Marriage and Succession

Sept. 14 Collected Works: Speeches & Letters

Homilies on Marriage and Obedience (Reader)

Foreman’s Dream (Reader)

Haigh, Chapters 2-4 (31-89)

Alison Heisch, “Queen Elizabeth I: Parliamentary Rhetoric and the Exercise of Power.” (Reader)

Week 4 Entertainments and Influence

Sept. 21 Gasgoine from The Glasse of Government (The Princely Pleasures at Kenelworth Castle) (Reader)

Sidney. Four Foster Children of Desire

The Lady of May (Reader)

Letter to the Queen (Reader)

Haigh, Chapter 5 (90-110)

Frye, Chapter 2 (56-96)

Montrose, “Celebration and Insinuation” (Reader)

Week 5 Sir Philip Sidney

Sept. 28 The Old Arcadia

Haigh, Chapters 6-7 (111-148)

Week 6 Ideology & Resistance

Oct. 5 Cardinal Allen’s Admonition (Reader)

Sir Walter Ralegh (Reader)

Carole Levin from Dissing Elizabeth (Reader)

Haigh (149-181)

Week 7 Drama

Oct. 12 Love’s Labour’s Lost

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Maurice Hunt (Reader)

Montrose, Chapter 10 from The Purpose of Playing (Reader)

Week 8 Drama Continued

Oct. 19 John Lyly, Endymion or the Man in the Moon (Reader)

Ben Jonson, Cynthia’s Revels (Reader)

Marcus, “Jonson and the Court” (Reader)

Week 9 Edmund Spenser

Oct. 26 The Faerie Queene, Book 1

Week 10 Edmund Spenser

Nov. 2 The Faerie Queene, Book 2

Frye, Chapter 3

Week 11 Edmund Spenser

Nov. 9 The Faerie Queene, Book 3

Week 12

Nov. 16 The Faerie Queene, Book 4

Paper Prospectus Due

Week 13 Thanksgiving. .

Nov. 23 No meeting but you should be reading.

Week 14 Edmund Spenser

Nov. 30 The Faerie Queeene, Books 5 & 6, Mutabilitie Cantos

Week 15 Portrait Presentation

Dec. 7 Montrose, from Representations (Reader)

Roy Strong, Introduction from Glorianna (Reader)

Papers due by noon on December 15th