Syllabus
View the Assignments

Course Texts
Required:
Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko
Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World
Cervantes’ Don Quixote
Michel de Montaigne’s Essays
Francois Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel
Edmund Spenser’s Poetry (Norton edition)
Smart Copy Packet available at Broadway and 6th street. (Pck.) 

Optional:
Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso
Catalina de Erauso’s Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of A Basque Transvestite in the New World
Sir Philip Sidney’s Major Works
Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered

  

Schedule 
WEEK ONE: From ERROUR to Hypertext
M 3/29  Introduction 

W 3/31  Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Book I, Cantoes 6 and 7. (Pck.) Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, Cantos 14-16. (Pck.) Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Book II, Canto 12.  Alcina, Armida, and Acrasia.  

WEEK TWO: The Orphic Poet and Mythopoesis.
M 4/5  Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Book II, Cantoes 34 and 35. (Pck.) Montaigne’s Essays, Book One, Essay 19.  Spenser’s Shepheardes Calendar, October Eclogue. Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.”  (Pck.). Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Orpheus, Book 10 (Pck.) Sir Philip Sidney’s Defence  and Xenophon’s Cyropaedia referenced. Prophetic “eating of the scroll.” 

W 4/7  Poetic Mythopoesis continued. 

WEEK THREE: Tyrian Rhetoric, the Figure of Dido, Envy, and Night.
M 4/12 Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Book III, Prologue. Session on Elizabeth I and portraits. Mary, Queen of Scots and James I referenced.  

W 4/14 Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene,Book III, Cantoes 11 and 12. Lady Mary Jane Wroth’s “Pamphilia to Amphilanthus.” Sonnet sequence. (Pck.) . Ovid’s Metamorphoses  and the cave of Envy. (Pck.)Wroth’s Urania, tortured lovers, the figure of wisdom, Night, and Orphic theogony. Laura Mulvey’s “voyeuristic scopophilia” applied.  

WEEK FOUR: Cross-dressing Amazons and Hermaphroditism.
M 4/19  Sir Philip Sidney’s Old Arcadia. Book One (excerpt) (Pck.) Political allegory, epic romance, early modern sexualities, and cross-dressing. 

W 4/21  Catalina de Erauso’s Lieutenant Nun (Pck.) Ovid’s Metamorphoses’ story of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, and the story of Iphis and Ianthe. (Pck.) Ruth Gilbert’s Early Modern Hermaphrodites referenced. 

WEEK FIVE: Sodometry and Cannibalism.
M 4/26  Montaigne’s Essays. Book One, Essays 8, 9, 28, Book Two, Essays 10, Book Three, Essays 3 and 8.  Impotence, homosociality, and sodometry. Jonathan Goldberg’s Sodometry referenced. 

W 4/28  Montaigne’s Book One, Essay 31. “On Cannibalism.” Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Book II, Canto 7, the Cave of Mammon.  Cannibalism, First Contact, the Art of Memory and memory palaces. Bartolome de Las Casa’s  ‘A Short Account of the destruction of the Indies”  and In Defense of the Indians. (both excerpts in Pck. ) Frances Yates’ Art of Memory referenced. The Faerie Queene, Book VI and Serena , the Salvage Man, and cannibals referenced.  

WEEK SIX: A Topsy-Turvey World, Frozen Speech, and The Carnivalesque
M 5/3 Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel. (Selections - Click Here)  Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World (excerpt in Pck.).  Peter Stallybrass and Allon White’s “From Carnival to Transgression.” (Pck.)   

W 5/5  Rabelais continued. 

WEEK SEVEN:The Plurality of Worlds, Utopias, Techno-scientism(?), and Orientalism
M 5/10  Cavendish’s The BlazingWorld  (Selections - Click Here).  Will cross-reference Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis and Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. MIDTERM DUE. 

W 5/12  George Sandy’s and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s travels in Travel Knowledge: European Discoveries in the Early Modern Period.  Orientalism.  John Mandeville’s Marvelous Adventures referenced. 

WEEK EIGHT: The Picaresque, Reception theory, and Postmodernism.
M 5/17  Cervantes’ Don Quixote. (Selections - Click Here) 

W 5/19 Don Quixote continued.  (Selections - Click Here) Jorge Luis Borges’ “Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote.” (Handout Already Given in Class) 

WEEK NINE: Postcolonial theory  and Slave Narratives.
M 5/24  Bring in Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel for a session of "Bad Acting".

W 5/26  Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko. 

WEEK TEN:
M 5/31 HOLIDAY.  Campus Closed. 

W 6/2   Final remnants of Renaissance thought.  

FINALS WEEK:
FINAL Exam and FINAL Papers due by Monday evening, June 7 by 6:00 p.m.