English 305 - SEM:POETS, PAGEANTRY, MONARCHS

We explore the ways in which medieval and early modern poets addressed their monarchs using the language of gender and how those texts conveyed carefully constructed and sometimes concealed messages. We begin with Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, a courtly poem that displays Chaucer's talents as poet, translator, and dramatist, a poem as dazzling as his Canterbury Tales, and like the Tales, informed by the political tensions of Ricardian England. We move from the late 14th century to the 16th, considering medieval advice to royal women as refracted through the pageantry created for Elizabeth I. We read three Elizabethan dramatic texts and end with a masque created for Anne of Denmark, queen of James I. (E)

Instructor permission. Not open to first-years, sophomores