ENG 331 - British Literature I

Credits: 3

Description
An English major requirement. This course covers important literary works and developments from the old English epic Beowulf, with its emphasis on the heroic as well as pagan and Christian values. This course also gives detailed attention to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written in the fourteenth century, as well as to the Middle English, that characterizes this important work. The sixteenth century includes well-known sonnets and plays by Shakespeare, and the early seventeenth century deals with important works by John Donne and the other metaphysical poets. John Milton’s Paradise Lost is also treated at length, inclusive of its main themes, its “grand” style, and its relationship to the epic tradition. The course concludes with a look at the Restoration and the eighteenth century with such notable writers Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and Olaudah Equiano. The use of technology is also an important part of this course.