ENG 624: Epic Poetry

First Six Weeks

Professor Lockerd

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