British Literary Traditions 1, spring 2002
Presentation suggestions

Please pick one of the following as your research project / presentation topic.

At the top of the list for each week [in brackets] is a list of the authors for that week, you may choose one of them, and prepare a critical and biographical background, or choose one of the broader historical or cultural topics. Or you may develop your own topic. If you want to come up with your own topic, please have it approved by me before the deadline.

Everyone should have a topic approved by me by Monday 1/28. I encourage you to do this sooner rather than later: There can only be one presentation per class, and first come, first served will be in effect.

Remember that you may work with another person. And I encourage you to work with a partner because group research and group presentations can be fuller, deeper, and more fun.

week of:

2/4 [Wyatt, Surrey]
the development of the sonnet
Renaissance humanism (Erasmus, More)
Petrarch & the Neo-Platonic philosophy of love

2/11 [Sidney]
the cult of Elizabeth
16^th century court culture (Walter Ralegh)

2/18 [Donne]
Catholics in sixteenth-century England
the sermon tradition

2/25 [Milton]
elegy tradition
pastoral

3/4 [spring break]

3/11 [Herbert, Marvell]
sacred poetry after Herbert: Vaughan, Cranshaw
Restoration court culture: Carew, Suckling, Lovelace

3/18 [Shakespeare]
carnival
fools/jesters in Elizabethan court
humoural science

3/25 [Behn]
slavery and the slave trade
women’s writing in seventeenth-century England
images of Africa

4/1 [Easter Break]

4/8 [Congreve]
changing conceptions of love and marriage
Restoration theater (Wycherley, Etherege)

4/15 [Pope]
satire: pen as sword
eighteenth-century consumer culture
international commerce

4/22 [Swift, Montagu, Johnson, Goldsmith]
the city: London
18^th-century feminism
images of daily life: Hogarth
country and city in 18^th century England
forming an English canon
sentimentalism