. Compare Shelley’s “England in 1819” and Keats’s “When I have fears that I may cease to be.” Identify the rhyme scheme of each sonnet. Do they conform to the structures of the Italian or English sonnet? Briefly describe what is happening in each sonnet, applying at least three of the poetry terms we learned in Week 1. How would you compare these sonnets to the sonnets that you studied in Week 1 and Week 2?
2. Apply any of the Literacy Criticism techniques from the Week 1 PowerPoint to any Week 3 title. (For instance, you may use Psychoanalytic theory to show how “Frost at Midnight” reflects Coleridge’s feelings about his childhood; you may use Marxist theory to (re-)read Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” as a poem about economics and capitalism.
3. What does “Ozymandias” by Shelley tell us about leaders, about leadership, and/or about authority?
Write a 250-word (minimum) response to each writing prompt below. You must meet the minimum word count for each response to get full credit.
Use only the assigned readings unless otherwise instructed.
Your responses must include quotations from each text used. Be sure to quote, cite, and reference from the text(s)
Week 1 Readings
The Middle Ages (to ca. 1485)
Introduction (pp. 3-26)
Timeline (pp. 27-29)
Geoffrey Chaucer
Biography (pp. 195-198)
Notes About The Canterbury Tales (pp. 198-199)
Lines 1-42 (pp. 200-201) and 790-810 (p. 219) from the “General Prologue,” also at https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/general-prologue-0
“The Miller’s Tale” at https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/millers-prologue-and-tale
Sir Thomas Malory
Biography (pp. 337-339)
From Morte Darthur – “The Conspiracy Against Lancelot and Guinevere” (pp. 339-344)
The Sixteenth Century 1485-1603
Introduction (pp. 359-389)
Timeline (pp. 390-391)
The English Bible
(pp. 399-403)
Christopher Marlowe
Biography (pp. 511-512)
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (p. 513)
Sir Walter Ralegh
Biography (pp. 501-502)
The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd (p. 502)
William Shakespeare
Biography (pp. 550-554)
Sonnets (p. 554)
Sonnet #18 (“Shall I compare…”) (pp. 556-557)
Sonnet #29 (“When, in disgrace…”) (p. 558)
Sonnet #71 (“No longer mourn…”) (pp. 560-561)
Sonnet #130 (“My mistress’ eyes…”) (p. 565)
Week 2 readings
The Early Seventeenth Century (1603-1660)
Introduction (pp. 655-681)
Timeline (pp. 682-683)
John Donne
Biography (pp. 684-686)
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning (pp. 697-698)
Ben Jonson
Biography (pp. 726-729)
On My First Son (p. 730)
Katherine Philips
Biography (p. 767)
A Married State (pp. 767-768)
Andrew Marvell
Biography (pp. 771-772)
To His Coy Mistress (pp. 772-773)
John Milton
Biography (pp. 789-792)
When I Consider How My Light Is Spent (pp. 818-819)
The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century 1660-1785
Introduction (pp. 955-983)
Timeline (pp. 984-985)
John Dryden
Biography (pp. 986-987)
From A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (p. 1022)
Aphra Behn
Biography (pp. 1027-1029)
The Disappointment (pp. 1029-1032)
Jonathan Swift
Biography (pp. 1080-1082)
A Modest Proposal (pp. 1260-1266)
Olauda Equiano
Biography (pp. 1448-1449)
From The Interesting Narrative of the Life… — “The Middle Passage” (pp. 1449-1454)
Thomas Gray
Biography (pp. 1464-1465)
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (pp. 1466-1469)
