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Love poetry speaks to us because it is about emotions that are familiar to all of us. Even love poems that are about 400 years old can therefore have a very immediate and powerful appeal to modern readers. However, we must not forget that we are not the readers their authors had in mind. These poems are based on ideas and mentalities of a remote and fascinating past. Any reading of them must involve an attempt at recovering as much of their cultural contexts as we can.
In this course, we are going to work on some of the great Elizabethan sonnet sequences (Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella; Samuel Daniel, To Delia, Michael Drayton, Idea; Edmund Spenser, Amoretti). We are also going to look into the history and typical conventions of the sonnet, and there will be ample opportunities to get acquainted with the Elizabethan world of ideas.
Texts: A reader will be made available well in advance of the semester (Copyshop Reckhammerweg 4). As always: read, think, enjoy, annotate and look things up if necessary. In addition to this, please buy (and read): Francesco Petrarca (ed.: Winfried Tilmann), Canzoniere (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2nd edn. 2000), ISBN 3-15-018084-8. Useful further reading: Ulrich Suerbaum, Das Elisabethanische Zeitalter (Stuttgart, 1989).
Requirements: regular attendance, reading the assigned texts, active participation, and a term paper in English. |
