English 551: Graduate Renaissance
Literature
Professor Melissa D. Aaron
Room 24 106 M 5:30-9:20 pm
Office: 24 229
Office hours: TTh, 10-12 AM; W, 1:30-3 PM; and by appointment
Phone:869-3839
Email:maaron@csupomona.edu
| Web page | Courses Page |
| Shakespeare Page | Resources Page |
| Discussion Questions | Discussion Board |
| Research paper | Group project |
Required texts
Renaissance Drama.
Ed. Arthur Kinney.
Renaissance Drama by Women: Texts. Ed. Susan Cerasano and
Marion Wynne-Davies.
Andrew Gurr. The Shakespearean Stage, 3rd edition.
Recommended: The Riverside Shakespeare
This class, nominally a survey in English Renaissance literature, will focus on non-Shakespearean drama. We will be studying the history, mechanics, and conventions of the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline public and private theater, reading plays in a variety of genres-chronicle history, city comedy, revenge tragedy and court masque-and calling into question some widely-held assumptions about the English Early Modern theater, Shakespeare, and the culture that produced them. By the end of the course, you will have studied the drama of this era in breadth in our readings and short writing assignments in class, in depth in a research paper, and in action, by analyzing, preparing, and performing a scne from one of those plays in a final project.
The plays chosen this quarter are generally considered "greatest hits," with a slight tilt towards Shakespeare's most famous and still-performed contemporaries, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. I've also included a pastoral and two Jacobean city comedies.
Course requirements
You will need access to a computer and the Internet
for this course-if this will present a problem, please contact me.
All work handed in to me must be typed and double-spaced in ten
or preferably twelve point font. The font I'm using for this,
Times New Roman, is nice and easy to read. Please type your name,
the class and section number, my name and the date in the upper-right
hand corner, and the title centered at the top of the first page.
Do not have a title page, and please, please staple your papers
together.
The short, ungraded assignments will be done electronically on a threaded discussion board. They are accessible through Blackboard. In order to access them, you will need your Cal Poly username and password. They are discussion-related and will count towards your participation grade. Since they are time-sensitive, they cannot be made up.
The
Research Paper
Since this is a graduate class, it seems appropriate
to spend some time on research methodology, with an eye towards producing a
scholarly paper, suitable for submission to one of the many scholarly conferences
and journals in the field, many of which specialize in the work of graduate
students. In order to make this a productive and instructive process, you will
be writing only one paper in the course of this term, but that paper will be
broken down into component and submitted multiple times. You will be required
to select a topic fairly early in the quarter and submit the topic both to me
and to the class at large on the discussion board. After this, you will be put
into writing support teams, who will help you locate resources, critique your
writing, and give you feedback. The next step will be producing a preliminary
paper, during which time you will narrow the topic, produce a working bibliography,
and narrate the process by which you attained the material. This paper will
be turned in to me for my feedback and suggestions for bibliography and other
routes of research. You will then work in your groups to produce a draft, which
you will then revise. The final submission will be a portfolio containing all
your drafts and prewriting, the final copy, and a journal or conference for
which you think the paper might be suitable.
Attendance policy
You can't participate if you're not
here, obviously. Here are some reasons you don't want to be absent:
More than three absences and your grade will be lowered. Six or
more and you will fail the course. Extreme tardiness (more than
ten minutes late) counts as an absence.
I don't distinguish between excused and unexcused absences,
and here's why. If you miss class, you'll miss discussion, my commentary on
the texts, homework assignments, etc. In a remarkably short period of time,
you'll find yourself terribly behind, and it will be next to impossible for
you to catch up. The attendance policy is to help you succeed, not to punish
you. If you are faced with illness or emergency, please let me know right away,
and the same applies if you want questions answered or additional help. I check
my email very regularly and you can also always come to my office hours.
Plagiarism
Did you know that "plagiarism" comes from
the Latin word for "kidnapper?" That's because it's theft, and the
University and I will treat it that way. I don't want to go into all the dire
consequences that will ensue; so don't do it. Enough said.
If you use someone else's ideas or words, you have to credit them. Here are two rules to help you with this: are you giving credit where credit is due? If someone wanted to find out more about the information you cited, or look up the quote, do they have enough information to do it? I would like you to use MLA documentation. On my Resources page, under Writing resources, there is a direct link to a handout on MLA style, as well as many other helpful writing resources.
Week 2: September 26th
Week 3: October 2nd.
M Spanish Tragedy.
Week 4: October 10th
Select a topic and email it to the professor by Friday.
Week 5: October 17th
Tamburlaine, Edward II.
Week 6: October 23rd
Jew of Malta, Doctor Faustus, Friar Bacon
and Friar Bungay.
Week 7 October 31st
Professor at conference.
Week 8: November 7th
M Preliminary paper due.
The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair.
Week 9 November 14th
M The Knight of the Burning Pestle.
Week 10: November 21st
MLove's Victorie.
Th Thanksgiving: no school.
Week 11: November 28th
M A Chaste Maid in Cheapside.
Exam Week: Monday December 6th 6 pm. Final performance projects due.
Return to the top of the page.