Engl. 433: Scholarly Essay
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Purpose:
The purpose of this activity is to afford you the opportunity to work on a piece of scholarly research and writing throughout the semester with the goal of producing an 8-10 page, well researched essay documented in MLA format. In the past, students have submitted their essays to the National Undergraduate Research Conference, and many of them have been accepted to present their work at the conference, which hosts students from major American universities and colleges. Radford has provided funding for our students, and we have driven to the conference together. I'd like to invite you to set as your goal for this project the presentation of your scholarly essay at the NURC. You will have completed some of your research for the essay in your bibliographic projects, but as you get deeper into your subject, you may find that you want and need to do more research on additional articles or chapters of books beyond the minimum required number for the bibliographic projects.Sir Phillip Sidney
It's very important that you try to devise a topic that genuinely interests you. Focus on a question or concern that matters to you personally. Throughout the course, we will be examining Renaissance literature in the context of the very real political, social and economic struggles that marked the early modern period and that remain struggles for us today. In your essay, you can address the same questions that we will be asking in the class, that is, questions about: gender, state authority and the individual, sexuality, social class, race or ethnicity, colonization, religious controversy, empire building, marriage and the family, or the construction of masculinity and femininity, to name only a few.
Possible Topics (a short list just to provoke your own thinking):
Renaissance humanism, education, and the construction of masculinity and/or femininity
The female body in the lyric poetry of Wyatt and Spenser (or any other poets we read)
The fashioning of masculinity in Spenser's Faerie Queene, Book 3 (or some other works we read)
Faerie Queene, Book 3, Female Sexuality and Queen Elizabeth
Spenser's Shepheardes Calender (or The Faerie Queene, Book 3) and Queen Elizabeth
Cultural gender anxiety and Book 3 of The Faerie Queene
Masculine virtue in Book 3 of Spenser's The Faerie Queene
Just what is chastity for men and for women in Book 3 of The Faerie Queene? How does it differ for each? What do the differences suggest about masculinity and femininity?
The fashioning of femininity in love lyrics of the Sixteenth Century (or some other works we read)
Gender and power in Petrarchan poetry
Queen Elizabeth's self-fashioning as virgin, mother, lover, warrior (any or all of these images)
Portraits of Elizabeth painted throughout her reign and changes in her self-fashioning or image construction
Clothing, gender and class in selected pieces of Renaissance literature and/or paintings
The representation of native peoples as "other" in exploration and discovery narratives (Hakluyt, Raleigh, etc.)
The representation of native peoples as "other" in Spenser (A View of the Present State of Ireland and/or The Faerie Queene)
Thomas More's Utopia and British exploration/colonization narratives
The captive female body in Spenser's Amoretti and/or Epithalamion
Male sexuality and masculinity in Gascoigne's The Adventures of Master F. J. and/or Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveler
Female sexuality in Gascoigne's The Adventures of Master F. J. and/or Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveler
Narrative Voice in Gascoigne's The Adventures of Master F. J. (especially the role of the narrator G.T. and the epistles between characters)
The female voice in Gascoigne's The Adventures of Master F.J. in view of Renaissance ideas of female conduct
Rape in Gascoigne's The Adventures of Master F.J. and/or The Unfortunate Traveler
Gender anxiety in Ben Jonson's Epicoene, or the Silent Woman
Same-sex eroticism in Ben Jonson's Epicoene
The market place, consumer goods, women's clothing and disruption of social classes in Ben Jonson's Epicoene
Violence in Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveler
Oral style and audience response in Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller
Rape in Gascoigne's The Adventures of Master F. J and/or Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller
Land distribution, property, and sexuality in Arden of Faversham
The dissolution and redistribution of church lands, land-lords, tenants and adultery in Arden of Faversham
Property, adultery and murder in Arden of Faversham
Political Sodomy in Marlowe's Edward the Second
Same-sex eroticism and love in Marlowe's Edward the Second
Same-sex eroticism and love in Shakespeare's Sonnets
Same-sex eroticism and love in Shakespeare's Sonnets and Marlowe's Edward the Second
Rules for female conduct and the struggle of Renaissance women to write (Elizabeth Cary and/or Aemilia Lanyer)
Ben Jonson's Epicoene, or the Silent Woman and Renaissance rules for female conduct (you might want to look at both Epicoene and Elizabeth Cary's Miriam the Faire Queene of Jewry)
Female silence, speech and subversion in Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum and Elizabeth Cary's Miriam the Faire Queene of Jewry
Cultural suspicion of female speech and Elizabeth Cary's Miriam the Faire Queene of Jewry
Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum and women's community
Baker's Home Page | 433 Description | 433 Requirements | 433 Syllabus | Course Descriptions and Syllabi