ENGL 316 The Art of Courtship (Not offered 1999-2000; to be offered 2000-2001)

During Elizabeth I's reign, love poetry and dramatic comedy acquired a remarkable popularity and brilliance, unparalled in English literary history. What is the "art"-the language, form, and rhetoric-of Elizabethan courtship? What kind of society produced such great literature? What kind of culture and relations between the sexes did the literature of courtship and seduction produce? This course explores the links between literary conventions and social conventions, sexual politics and court politics. It studies gems of English Renaissance literature (Shakespearean comedy such as Twelfth Night or Much Ado About Nothing, love poetry by Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, and Donne, Castiglione's The Courtier) along with samples of court rhetoric, political negotiations, and popular culture (Elizabeth I's speeches, the first poem written and published by an Englishwoman, the first English autobiography, social debates over poetry, the theater, sexuality, clandestine marriage, women's lawful liberty, and the preservation or destruction of social order.) There will be short lectures, student presentations, and lots of discussion. Requirements: weekly journal entries, one 5-page paper, and a final research paper of 10-12 pages. Prerequisites: a 100-level English course, except 150 (formerly 103). (Pre-1800)