Evans, Jonathan
MWF 1 :50 PM
Park Hall 0269
ENGL 2310 - English Literature from the Beginnings to 1700
This course is designed to perform two functions (1) to satisfy one of the College of Arts & Sciences General Humanities requirements for the baccalaureate degree at the University of Georgia; and (2) to give an overview and introduction to several of the great works of English literature from the beginnings in the Old English period to end of the 17th century. More specifically, the course covers literature of the Medieval and Renaissance periods (from Beowulf to Paradise Lost), concentrating on major works of literature from the two periods both for their unique qualities and what they can suggest about English culture at the time these works were written. If you take a look at UGA’s online Course Bulletin, you’ll find a pretty sketchy description for the course:
Course Title: English Literature from the Beginnings to 1700
Course Description: Writers typically include: Beowulf poet, Gawain poet, Chaucer, Spenser, Sidney, Marlowe, Donne, Jonson, Shakespeare, Milton.
Duplicate Credit: Not open to students with credit in ENGL 2350H
If you’d been a UGA student several decades ago, you’d have found a more prescriptive statement requiring instructors to spend at least half of the course on Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton. That requirement was thrown out long ago, and much greater freedom was extended to professors teaching the course. In my course, we omit Chaucer but include Sir Thomas Malory, and in the 8 or 9 weeks which you’ll be spending in this course, you’ll be required to read selections from Old English poetry & prose, selections from Malory's Morte D’Arthur, selections from Milton's Paradise Lost, and you’ll be reading all of Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Shakespeare's Henry IV, Pt. 1. There is no overarching theory or scheme uniting these disparate works -- I'm not pushing any particular agenda through the reading of these works -- but we'll be responding to each of them on their own merits within the broad context of the cultural-historical periods in which they were written. There'll be lots of quizzes over basic reading knowledge and comprehension, cumulatively worth 1/4 of the final grade; students will have the opportunity to write several short papers (some of them optional) delving deeper into the meanings of the literary works every couple weeks, cumulatively equaling 1/4 of the final grade; there'll be a mid-term essay and a final exam essay probing for broader understanding of the deepest themes, each worth 1/4 of the final course grade. Though the mid-term and the final-exam essay are required, students will have the option of omitting one paper before the mid-term and one before the final. This is an on-campus, in-person version of the asynchronous, online course I offer each Summer Semester for students who can't squeeze the class into their Fall/Spring schedule. That course will be offered again also this Summer Semester 2025, and if enrollments for the Spring 2025 class exceed available seats, I will cordially invite those who need it to consider shifting to the online class.
Course Grade
As indicated above, the final course grade will be calculated in this way:
Quiz average 25%
Essay average 25%
Midterm exam 25%
Final exam 25%
Texts for this course.
I’ve deliberately ordered the material for this course in short paperbacks for several reasons, the first one financial. You can get new copies of these 5 books pretty inexpensively; but if you order used copies in advance online from Amazon, you can get them literally for almost pennies plus postage. And if you want or need to purchase them one at a time as you go, at first you’ll only really need to get the first two books for the first couple weeks of the course; you can order the others later. I’ve listed them in chronological order from the first to the last according to the weekly schedule.
A second reason I’ve ordered the books I have is that it’s lots easier to carry around a short paperback than it is to haul around a big fat bulky textbook such as The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Oxford Anthology of English Literature, The Longman Anthology of English Literature, or others like it. I mean, those books are huge. And most of what’s in them is wasted, as nobody can read all that’s in them for a one-semester course, no matter how hard they try or how much the instructor threatens or brow-beats their students.
Tentatively, here's the schedule:
January: Old English poetry and Beowulf; Essay #1
February: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Orfeo; Essay #2
Midterm Essay
March: Henry IV, Part One; Essay #3
April: Milton's Paradise Lost: Essay #4
May: Final Exam May 2, 12:00-3:00 p.m.