English Literature

Syllabus

1. Winter Term

Old English Literature

1. Elegies: "The Wonderer", "The Seafarer", "Deor's Lament"

2. The Dream of the Rood, Beowulf

Middle English Literature

(3) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

(4) Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (‘The General Prologue’, ‘the Nun’s Priest’s

Tale’ [about Reynard the Fox] and the ‘Miller’s tale’)

(5) English Medieval Drama: fragments from the anthology

Renaissance Literature

(6) Edmund Spenser Amoretti (selected sonnet – 1, anthology)

William Shakespeare: Sonnets (2, 18, 20, 55, 73, 106, 116, 130, 136, 141, 144, 147 – chose three sonnets)

Philip Sidney – (selected sonnet – 1, anthology)

(7) Christopher Marlowe: Dr Faustus + TEST

(8) Thomas Kyd: The Spanish Tragedy (anthology); William Shakespeare: Hamlet,

(9) William Shakespeare: King Lear,

(10) William Shakespeare: Mid Summer's Night Dream, Henry V – prologue (anthology)

(11) William Shakespeare: The Tempest

Metaphysical poetry:

(12) John Donne: "Valediction: Forbidden Mourning", "The Flea", "Elegy XIX", "The

Anniversary"; George Herbert: "The Collar", "The Pearl"; Henry Vaughan “The retreat”

Cavalier Poetry:

(13) Robert Herrick: “The Hock-cart, or Harvest Home”, “The Argument of His Book”;

Richard Crashaw: “The Weeper”, “The Flaming Heart”; Andrew Marvell: "To His Coy Mistress", "The Definition of Love" + TEST

II SEMESTR

Augustan Classicism

1. Alexander Pope: Essay on Criticism (fragments), The Rape of the Lock

The beginnings of the novel:

2. Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe, Samuel Richardson: Pamela (fragments) - realism

3. Jonathan Swift: Guliver's Travels (I or II journey); Henry Fielding: Tom Jones (fragments); Lawrence Sterne: Tristram Shandy – parody of realism (+ satire)

4. One selected gothic novel: Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto, Anne Radcliffe: The

Mysteries of Udolfo, Matthew Gregory Lewis The Monk: Mary Shelley: Frankenstein – fragments from the anthology and prefaces to Walpole)

Pre-Romanticism:

5. Robert Burns: "To a Mouse", "Auld Lang Syne", "Tam O'Shanter"

William Blake: "The Lamb", "The Tyger", "The Little Vagabond", "Holy Thursday", "The Chimney Sweeper" (both from Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience), “London”

Romanticism:

6. William Wordsworth: "The preface to Lyrical Ballads", "We are Seven", Tintern Abbey", "Lines Written in Early Spring" ( anthology)

7. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", "Kubhla Khan"

8. Percy B. Shelley: "Ode to the West Wind", "The Cloud"

John Keats: "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode to a Grecian Urn"

9. George Gordon Byron: Don Juan cantos I, II, X, XI + ESEJ (45 five minutes class exercise)

Victorian Literature:

10. Charles Dickens: Hard Times + G. Eliot Scenes of clerical life (from the anthology)

11. William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair (fragments about the author and beginnings of chapters); Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heightsop

12. TEST + Victorian poetry

13. Victorian poetry:

Alfred Tennyson: In Memoriam (selected poems - 2), "The Lady of Shalott,"

Robert Browning: "My Last Duchess", "Porphyria’s Lover"

The pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood:

Dante Gabriel Rosetti: "The Blessed Damozel"

Christina Rosetti: "Uphill", "Goblin Market" (works from the anthology)

Gerald Manley Hopkins: "Pied Beauty", "God's Grandeur"

Reference List:

Liliana Sikorska. 2007. A Short History of English Literature. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie

Liliana Sikorska (ed). 2007. An Outline History of English Literature in Texts. Viol. I, II, III. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie.