To buy (mandatory books/editions):
- William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, ed. E. S. Donno, The New Cambridge Shakespeare, Cambridge UP, 2004.
- The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. 1, ed. Stephen Greenblatt and others (9th edition). Except where noted (*), all poems and prose texts listed below are in this volume.
Mandatory secondary reading (available via Fronter):
The following articles/chapters are required reading for MA students:
- Peter G. Platt, “Shakespeare and Rhetorical Culture,” in A Companion to Shakespeare, ed. D. Scott Kastan (Blackwell, 1999), 277-96
- Nancy J. Vickers, “Diana Described: Scattered Woman and Scattered Rhyme ,” Critical Inquiry 8:2 (1981), 265-79
- Alison Shell and Arnold Hunt, “Donne’s Religious World” in The Cambridge Companion to John Donne, ed. Achsah Guibbory (Cambridge UP, 2006), 65-82
- Marcy L. North, “Women, the Material Book and Early Printing,” in The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing, ed. Laura Lunger Knoppers (Cambridge UP, 2009), 68–82
POETRY:
- Sir Philip Sidney, sonnets from Astrophil and Stella: 1 (Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show); 15 (You that do search for every purling spring); 41 (Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance); 45 (Stella oft sees the very face of woe); 71 (Who will in fairest book of Nature know). Also by Sidney: (*) song from The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (What tongue can her perfections tell?) (available on Fronter)
- Edmund Spenser, sonnets from Amoretti: 64 (Comming to kisse her lyps); 75 (One day I wrote her name upon the strand)
- Mary Wroth, sonnets from Pamphilia to Amphilantus: 16 (Am I thus conquered?); 103 (My muse now happy, lay thyself to rest)
- William Shakespeare, sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?); 130 (My Mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun); 138 (When my love swears that she is made of truth)
- Michael Drayton, sonnets from Idea: 6 (How many paltry, foolish, painted things); 8 (There’s nothing grieves me, but that age should haste); 50 (As in some countries far removed from hence)
- John Donne, “The Good Morrow”; “The Apparition”; “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”; “The Relic”; Elegy 19 (To his Mistress going to Bed); Holy Sonnets 1, 5, 10, 13, 14, 19
- George Herbert, “Easter Wings”; “Denial”; “Man”; “Death”
- Richard Crashaw, “To the Noblest & best of Ladies, the Countess of Denbigh”, incl. “Non vi” (Not by force)
- Katherine Philips, “Upon the Double Murder of King Charles”
- Margaret Cavendish, “The Poetess’s Hasty Resolution”
PROSE:
- Sir Philip Sidney, from The Defense of Poesy
- John Donne, Meditation 17, and excerpt from Death’s Duel
- Izaac Walton, from The Life of Dr. John Donne
- Ben Jonson, (*) from Timber, or Discoveries (short excerpt available on Fronter)
- John Milton, from Areopagitica
Recommended background reading (more suggestions will be posted on Fronter):
- Isabel Rivers, Classical and Christian Ideas in English Renaissance Poetry: A Students’ Guide, 2nd edn (Routledge, 1994)