The main objectives of the curricular unit are: (I) to provide the students with the skills required to identify and characterize the major periods into which the English literary tradition naturally divides itself, as well as to point out the relations that subsist between those periods and the various historical and cultural stages of the Modern World; (II) to provide the students with the skills required to identify and describe the most significant literary antecedents of the Elizabethan poetic legacy, as well as to correlate them with such legacy; (III) to provide the students with the skills required to identify, characterize, and describe the collective and individual traits of the major literary works of the Elizabethan Age, as well as to correlate those traits with the historical and cultural context of Elizabethan England and Renaissance Europe.
The syllabus has been divided into two modules. Module (1) is titled "Antecedents" and divides itself into three topics: (i) the major periods of the English literary tradition and their correlations with the different historical and cultural stages of the Modern World; (ii) synoptic view of the pre-Elizabethan literary tradition; (iii) survey of Chaucer's literary production and summary study of "The Canterbury Tales". Module (2) is titled "The Elizabethan Age" and divides itself into four topics: (i) the historical and cultural context (political, religious, social, and intellectual) of the Elizabethan Age; (ii) Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queene"; (iii) Christopher Marlowe's "Doctor Faust"; (iv) survey of Shakespeare's literary production and study of (a) the historical play "Richard III", (b) the comedy "A Midsummer Night's Dream", (c) the tragedy "Coriolanus, and (d) the romance "The Tempest".
Topics (i) and (ii) of module (1) are taught by means of the transmission of the teacher's own knowledge and of the reading, elucidation, and correlation of selected passages of those critical studies which the teacher has judged to be most adequate to the subjects handled and the curricular unit's objectives. Topic (i) of module (2) is also taught in this way. On their turn, the literary works which are specified in topic (iii) of module (1) and the remaining three topics (ii, iii, iv) of module (2) are studied by means of the reading and detailed analysis of their most significant and illuminating passages, together with the help of integral synopses of the texts (prepared in advance for this purpose) and of excerpts of those critical studies and commentaries which the teacher has judged to be most adequate to the curricular unit's objectives and the students' interests and academic level.
CHAUCER, Geoffrey. "The Riverside Chaucer". Ed. Larry D. Benson, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
MARLOWE, Christopher. "Doctor Faustus". Ed. David Scott Kastan, New York, Norton, 2005.
SHAKESPEARE, William. "The Riverside Shakespeare." Ed. G. Blakemore Evans, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1974.
SPENSER, Edmund. "The Faerie Queene". Ed. A. C. Hamilton, Harlow, Longman, 2001.
BAUGH, Albert C., ed. "A Literary History of England". 2. ed., London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.
SAINTSBURY, George. "A History of Elizabethan Literature". 2. ed, London, Macmillan, 1920.
BINDOFF, S. T. "Tudor England". Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1985.
BROOKS-DAVIES, Douglas. "Spenser’s Faerie Queene: a Critical Commentary on Books I and II". Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1977.
MANGAN, Michael. "Doctor Faustus". London, Penguin, 1989.
GRANVILLE-BARKER & HARRISON, G. B., eds. "A Companion to Shakespeare's Studies". Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010.
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