"Big-Picture" Issues for Papers and Exams

        These pages contain multiple mini-essays which describe some of the major issues which unify English 211's survey of early English literature.  They bring together evidence from clusters of texts to which some specific analytical methods can be applied.  That should be of help to students trying to develop paper topics beyond the well-worn thematic analysis and character-development strategies for thesis generation.  Those strategies still can yield worthwhile insights, but these issues connect to more recent trends in literary theory and method, as well as to other courses required for the English major.  For that reason, they should be considered important resources for students preparing to write exams for 211 and for 212.  The issues and analytical methods do not disappear in 1700, but return and continue to change in the period covered by "Pope to Eliot" and by the American literature surveys.  They should help students to make use of their English 211 reading in the rest of their reading and writing for the major.

• The 7th Edition of the Norton Anthology, Survey Courses, Publishing and the Canon
• Sons and Daughters of the Church Who Write
• English Literary Representations of Otherness: Moral Absolutes; Class; Gender; Race
• Freedom, Independence and. "Belongingness" in English pre- and post-Civil War Literature
• Signs, seals, and proofs of identity and as metaphors for the self.
• Becoming a poet in the Medieval and Early Modern Period
• Becoming an actor or playwright in the Early Modern Period
• Oral/Aural Literary Performance and Print-Literate Literary Conventions
• Implied Authors and Readers, Inscribed Readers, and Interpretation
• How Medieval and Renaissance English drama was built.

Syllabus View

Chronological View of English 211

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Chronological View of English 330

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