English 609.34: The Faerie Queene

Instructor: Dr. Jim Ellis

This central focus of this course will be Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene (1596). We will be reading the whole of the epic, drawing on recent critical trends both in Spenser studies and literary studies more generally. One particular area of interest will be the construction of space in the poem, looking at such things as the role of landscape in allegory and epic, the representation of bodies in space, and historical shifts in the experience of space. Other related examinations might include maps of real and imaginary places, mapping and nationhood, representations of foreignness, ecphrasis, architecture and bodies, gardens, and the structure of allegory.

Required Texts

Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene. Ed. A. C. Hamilton. 2nd Ed. London: Longman, 2001.

Course pack of critical and theoretical readings. These will likely include sections of such studies as:
M. M. Bakhtin, "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel"
Michel Foucault, "Other Spaces"
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities
Kaja Silverman, Threshold of the Visible World
Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood
Theresa M. Krier, Gazing on Secret Sights
Giuliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion
John Dixon Hunt, Greater Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory

Course Requirements

Two seminar presentations
Two seminar responses
One final essay, 20-25 pp.