Winter 2019
ENG 624: British Epic
R 6-8:50 p.m. Eberhard Center
We will read large parts of the early British epics and smaller parts of later ones. The course is intended to focus on the epic genre on the one hand and the changing British tradition on the other. We will be interested in seeing how the definition of epic suffered several sea changes in the course of the centuries. In other words, this will be a course in intellectual history as well as a course in a literary genre and a survey of British lit.
Works to be included (i.e. excerpts from each):
Beowulf
Troilus and Criseyde
The Faerie Queene
Paradise Lost
The Rape of the Lock
The Prelude
Don Juan
The Idylls of the King
The Waste Land
Four Quartets
Ulysses
In Parenthesis