ENGL 287 Literary Experiments from Chaucer to Milton
We might think that older literature by the likes of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton is dustily conventional, a cultural tradition that we're obliged to read (or compelled to disavow) but that has little relevance to our lives today. The goal of this class will be to persuade you, to the contrary, that the literature written during the period beginning with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the late 14th century and ending with Milton's Paradise Lost in the 17th century constitutes one of the most exciting and experimental moments in literary history, one that offers uniquely relevant lessons for contemporary thinking about community and storytelling, narrative and memory, truth and perception, race and power, as well as gender and sexuality. At the same time, we will explore what is productively strange, challenging, and even alienating about these texts from the past, measuring how their distance from us provides unique opportunities for thinking. We will also examine how authors such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton came to constitute the foundation of the English literary canon, and how this canon has been used to advance (or to critique) English national and colonial ideologies. Together we’ll explore a set of analytic concepts and strategies for interpreting their unique texts that will make you a more sensitive, precise, and persuasive reader and writer.