ENGL 2010 - The English Literary Tradition I

(HB) (LA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits.

ENGL 2010, not a prerequisite for ENGL 2020, may be used as one of the three pre-1800 courses required of English majors.

A. Galloway.

This course will introduce literature from the earliest written English poetry to the works of the Renaissance, through a long span of what we now call “England.” We’ll thus follow the origins and development of one of the world’s great literatures, while bumping over multiple invasions, collisions and transformations of languages and peoples, flowering of cultural “renaissances” before and then including the Renaissance, devastating plagues, religious renewals and purges, and extraordinary innovations in the technologies of spreading knowledge. Sampling epic, romance, allegory, lyric, drama, prose and their combinations, we will focus on writings from Beowulf to the works of John Milton.