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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2016/2017

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures : Lifelong Learning (LLC)

Undergraduate Course: Renaissance Poetry (LLLG07049)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Literatures, Languages and Cultures CollegeCollege of Humanities and Social Science
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 7 (Year 1 Undergraduate) AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits10 ECTS Credits5
SummaryTHIS IS A FOR-CREDIT COURSE OFFERED BY THE OFFICE OF LIFELONG LEARNING (OLL); ONLY STUDENTS REGISTERED WITH OLL SHOULD BE ENROLLED.

The centrepiece of this course will be three weeks on Shakespeare's unsurpassed but difficult Sonnets (c.1594-1604). We will put Shakespeare's work in context by exploring the origins of Renaissance verse in the titanic achievements of Dante and Petrarch, the tormented soul of Michelangelo, and Shakespeare's direct precursors: the witty Sir Philip Sidney, adored across Europe as the perfect 'Renaissance Man'; and the devout Platonist Edmund Spenser. This course encompasses some of the greatest poetry ever written.

Foreign texts will be studied in translation with the original in parallel.
Course description Week 1: The Godfather of Renaissance poetry: excerpts from Dante's Inferno (c.1315)
Week 2: The birthpangs of Renaissance love-poetry: Petrarch's sonnets with translations with Sir Thomas Wyatt and other Tudor writers
Week 3: The torments of art: sonnets by Michelangelo to a beautiful young man
Week 4: Classical passions: Ronsard, the French court, and Mary Queen of Scots
Week 5: Witty, doomed love: Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella (1579)
Week 6: Courtship and marriage: Edmund Spenser's Amoretti (c.1590)
Weeks 7, 8 and 9: The greatest love poetry ever written: Shakespeare's Sonnets (c.1594-1604)
Week 10: The religious sonnet: John Donne
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
* delineate the main genres of Renaissance verse;
* analyse the use of complex language in Renaissance verse;
* situate Renaissance verse in its cultural and political context.
Reading List
Essential
Greenblatt, S. ed., 2012. The Norton Anthology of English Literature vol. 1. New York: W. W. Norton.
Musa, M. ed., 2002. Dante, the Divine Comedy Vol. 1: The Inferno. London: Penguin.
Mortimer, A. ed., 2002. Petrarch: Canzoniere. London: Penguin.

Recommended
Norbrook, D. and Woudhuysen, H., 1993. The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse. London: Penguin.
Norbrook, D., 2002. Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance. Oxford: OUP.

Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Collaborative working.
Group discussion.
Composition of discursive essays.
Understanding of interpersonal relationships.
KeywordsNot entered
Contacts
Course organiserDr Anya Clayworth
Tel:
Email: aclaywor@staffmail.ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMrs Sabine Murdoch
Tel: (0131 6)51 1855
Email: Sabine.Murdoch@ed.ac.uk
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