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| From the University of Iowa's copy of Metamorphoseon, Antonio Tempesta, Amsterdam, 1606 |
So here's the syllabus, in all its ragged glory (evidently blogger won't actually let me attach files, so please excuse the formatting, which will be a little rough):
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008:122: 16th and 17th Century Poetry:
Ovid in England
University of Iowa
Time and location: 9.30-10.45 AM T/Th, 207 EPB
Instructor: Dr. Blaine Greteman
blaine-greteman@uiowa.edu
Phone: 319-384-1860
Office Hours: 12.30-1.30 T/TH & 4.00-5.00 M, in 474 EPB,
or by appointment
Ovid was the bad boy of classical poetry, and writers in
Shakespeare’s England embraced his works with an unprecedented
enthusiasm. This course will ask why these writers were so drawn to
Ovid’s erotic elegies, his tales of transformation, and his poetics of
exile. We’ll read Ovid’s poetry in both contemporary translations and in
the ones that Shakespeare and his contemporaries knew and produced. We’ll also
examine the way these writers used Ovid as the launching pad for their own
imaginative efforts in works like Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and
Venus and Adonis, John Donne’s elegies, and Spenser’s Faerie
Queene. What did Ovid offer these writers and why did so many
of them respond to his work at this historical moment? Just as importantly, how
do these Ovidian poetics speak to us now, during the only historical period
that has produced as many translations and adaptations of Ovid as the
Renaissance?
Required Texts:
Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans.
A.D. Melville (Oxford, 1986; reissued 2006).
Shakespeare, Midsummer
Night’s Dream, ed. Barbara A. Mowat (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1993) (or equivalent edition).
+ coursepack at Zephyr Copies, 124 E. Washington St.
Grades:
Participation
and attendance: 10%
Group
Presentation: 10%
Paper
1: 15%
Paper
2: 25%
Midterm: 15%
Final: 25%
I
will give “+” and “–“ grades.
A note on readings: readings marked “OM” refer to the Oxford
edition of Ovid’s Metamorphosis; all others are in the reader unless otherwise
noted.
week of august 20: sex, power, and poetry, or
why shakespeare and
his contemporaries loved ovid
Tuesday: Course
introduction; Midsummer Nights Dream, dir.
Adrian Noble, 1996
Thursday: Midsummer
Night’s Dream contd. Read Midsummer
Night’s Dream (Mowatt)
I-III.
Ovid, Pyramus and Thisbe
(OM p. 76-79)
week of august 27: hierarchy and the politics of translation
Tuesday: Course
[re]introduction. Midsummer Night’s Dream
(IV-V).
Louise Adrian Montrose, “Shaping fantasies”
(ICON)
Thursday: Golding’s
“Preface to the Reader” (in reader).
Creation
and Four ages of Man (OM pg 1-14)
(Compare Ted Hughes and
Golding on handout)
Raphael Lyne, “Ovid in
English Translation” (ICON)
week
of september 3: the anti-epic mode and
imperial tensions
Tuesday: Apollo & Daphne; Phaeton (OM pg
14-36)
Heather James, “Ovid and
the Question of Politics in Early Modern England” (in reader)
Metamorphosis Due (ungraded but required)
Thursday: Arachne (OM 126-125); Spenser Muiopotmos, lines 232-440;
Jupiter and Europa,
Cadmus (OM 49-54); Hobbes, De Cive (in
reader)
Topics for Paper 1 Assigned
week
of september 10: sexual politics – unlicensed desire
Tuesday: Ovid, Heroides XVIII-XIX, Hero and Leander, trans. Daryl Hine (in reader)
Thursday: Marlowe, Hero and Leander
Group 1: Sexual Deviance in Early Modern England
week of september 17: moral meaning and resistance
Thursday: Marlowe, Hero and Leander
Tuesday: Chapman’s continuation of Hero and Leander (in reader)
Paper 1 Thesis Statements Due
week of september 24 : speaking through ovid
Tuesday: Henry
Petowe’s Second Part of Hero and Leander
Thursday:
week of october 1: protestant poetics
Tuesday: Ovid, Heroides XV (Sappho to Phaon); John Donne, Sappho to Philaenis
Group 2: Women Writers
Thursday: Goodnight
Moon (read in class)
Ovid,
Metamorphosis bk. 10 (OM pg.225-51)
Paper 1 Due
week of october 8: gardens of good and evil
Tuesday: Spenser, Faerie Queene II.XII (Guyon, Knight of Temperance)
Thursday: Spenser, Faerie Queene, III.vi (Birth of Belphoebe, Garden of Adonis)
week of october 15: venus and adonis
Tuesday: Shakespeare,
Venus and Adonis
Group
3: The Plague
Thursday: Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis
week of october 22: politics of anti-petrarchan
poetry
Tuesday: Midterm
Thursday: Marlowe,
All Ovid’s Elegies, Bk I
Group 4: Petrarchan Poetry and Elizabeth’s
Court
week of october 29: angry young ovidians
Tuesday: Donne, Elegy I (Jealosie)
[Compare to Amores 1.4, trans. Peter Greene]
Donne’s
Elegy 3 “Change,”; Elegy XIX “To His
Mistress Going to Bed” / [Compare
to Marlowe’s translation of Amores I.5]; “The Indifferent”
[Compare to Marlowe’s translation of Amores 2.4]
Group
5: Inns of Court Culture
Thursday: Robert
Herrick, “No Loathsomeness in Love”, “the Vine,” “The Night Piece, to Julia”;
Thomas Carew, “A Rapture”
week of november 5: deluding and dangerous art
Tuesday: Ovid, Pygmalion (OM 232-34); John
Marston, The Metamorphoses of Pigmalion’s Image
Thursday: George Sandys, “Philomela” and commentary,
from Ovid’s Metamorphosis Englished
Paper two topics due
week of november 12: uneasy ovidianism
Tuesday: Milton’s Lycidas; Invocation to Bk. III of Paradise Lost lines 1-55)
For refresher, see
Ovid’s “Orpheus and Eurydice” (224-28) and the conclusion
to the Orpheus story248-52)
Group
6: Puritans and Poetry
Thursday: Ovid, Echo and Narcissus (OM 61-66);
Milton, Paradise Lost, Book
IV.410-504 (Eve recounts her creation and first moments in Paradise)
week of november 19: break
Tuesday: Thanksgiving holiday.
Thursday: Thanksgiving holiday
week of november 26: eterne in mutability
Tuesday: Ovid,
Book XV (OM 352-79) Doctrines of Pythagoras
Paper 2 Due
Thursday: Spenser,
Two Cantos of Mutabilitie
week of december 3: change and apocalypse
Tuesday: Spenser, Two Cantos of Mutabilitie
Thursday: Spenser
continued, Final exam review
FINAL EXAM: TUESDAY
8:00-10:00 PM (yes, PM!) in 207 EPB
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