- Overview
- Module description
Food and Literature in Early Modern England (EAS3246)
Staff | Dr Ayesha Mukherjee - Convenor |
---|---|
Credit Value | 30 |
ECTS Value | 15 |
NQF Level | 6 |
Pre-requisites | None |
Co-requisites | None |
Duration of Module | Term 2: 11 weeks; |
Module aims
This module covers the English Renaissance, Civil Wars, and Interregnum (1580-1660) and aims to familiarise you with a range of texts, paintings, maps, and images that represented social, political, and cultural attitudes to food, and imagined remedies for food-related anxieties. Interdisciplinary developments in Food Studies – from anthropological, environmental, historical, and literary perspectives – have demonstrated creative ways of interpreting the pervasive presence of food in literature, which you will be encouraged to explore in an early modern context. You will develop research skills through work on conventional essays as well as distinctive group assignments and blog posts.
ILO: Module-specific skills
- 1. demonstrate an informed appreciation of the relevance of food in specific authors and works of the period 1580-1660
- 2. demonstrate an informed appreciation of the literary and cultural approaches to understanding food-related issues in the early modern period, and their current relevance
- 3. demonstrate an informed appreciation of the literary and cultural approaches to understanding food-related issues in the early modern period, and their current relevance
ILO: Discipline-specific skills
- 4. demonstrate an advanced ability to analyse the literature of an earlier era and to relate its concerns and its modes of expression to its historical context;
- 5. demonstrate an advanced ability to interrelate texts and discourses specific to their own discipline with issues in the wider context of cultural and intellectual history
- 6. demonstrate an advanced ability to understand and analyse relevant theoretical ideas, and to apply these ideas to literary texts
ILO: Personal and key skills
- 7. through seminar work and presentations, demonstrate advanced communication skills, and an ability to work both individually and in groups;
- 8. through essay-writing, demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, an advanced capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument, and a capacity to write clear and correct prose
- 9. through research for seminars, essays, and presentations, demonstrate advanced proficiency in the analysis of complex material and communication of ideas
Syllabus plan
Topics to be covered may include:
Section 1: Production and Distribution
Growing Food: Agricultural Discourses
Core Texts: Edmund Spenser, Shepherd’s Calendar, “December Eclogue”; Andrew Marvell, “Mower” poems.
Extracts and images: Thomas Tusser’s Husbandry; Hugh Platt’s Garden of Eden
Knowing Food: Scientific Discourses
Core Texts: John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IV
Extracts and images: Medical and alchemical works (Moffet to Brooke)
Mapping Food: Geographical Discourses
CoreTexts: Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, Book 1, Song 1 (Devon and Cornwall); Peter Mundy, Travels (England, Wales, India)
Maps, illustrations, digital media: Speed, Drayton, Harriot, Mundy
Buying and Selling Food: Commercial Discourses
Core Text: Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair
Extracts: historical documents on food import and markets
Section 2: Politics of Consumption
Feasts
CoreTexts: Ben Jonson, Love’s Welcome (masque); Eleanor Davies, “Belshazzar’s Feast”
Paintings and images: Breughel, Battle of Carnival and Lent; from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera
Focus on Assessment
Group presentations
Crimes and Riots
Core Text: William Shakespeare, Coriolanus
Extracts: Robert Greene (conny catching), John Reynolds, Robert Wilkins (Midlands Rising)
Communality
Core Texts: Gerrard Winstanley et al, True Levellers Standard Advanced; Abiezer Coppe, First Fiery Flying Roll
Illustrations: From radical pamphlets and anti-ranter pamphlets
Section 3: Imagining Remedies
Households
Core Texts: Ben Jonson, “To Penshurst”; Robert Herrick, selected poetry
Food recipes: Hugh Platt, Delights for Ladies
Moderation
Core Texts: William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1; Merry Wives of Windsor
Images: Picturing Falstaff - performance images
Waste and Recycling
CoreText: John Milton, Paradise Regained, Book 2 (Satan’s banquet)
Extract: from Thomas Nashe, Lenten Stuffe
Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
---|---|---|
33 | 267 | 0 |
Details of learning activities and teaching methods
Category | Hours of study time | Description |
---|---|---|
Scheduled | 33 | 11 x 2hr Seminars, 6 x 1hr lectures, 5 x 1hr workshops |
Guided independent | 33 | study groups and presentation preparation |
Guided independent | 70 | Seminar preparation (individual) |
Guided independent | 164 | reading, research and essay preparation |
Formative assessment
Form of assessment | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
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Summative assessment (% of credit)
Coursework | Written exams | Practical exams |
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80 | 0 | 20 |
Details of summative assessment
Form of assessment | % of credit | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
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Group presentation | 20 | 15 minutes, | 1-7, 9 | Oral feedback from tutor and peers in seminar, supplemented by feedback sheet with opportunity for tutorial follow-up. |
Blog post | 20 | 1000 words | 1-6, 8-9 | Online Feedback sheet with tutorial follow-up |
Essay | 60 | 3500 words | 1-6, 8-9 | Online Feedback sheet with opportunity for tutorial follow-up |
0 | ||||
0 | ||||
0 | ||||
0 |
Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)
Original form of assessment | Form of re-assessment | ILOs re-assessed | Timescale for re-assessment |
---|---|---|---|
Group presentation | Presentation materials OR 1500 words essay | 1-7, 9 | Referral/deferral period |
Blog post | Blog post (1000 words) | 1-6, 8-9 | Referral/deferral period |
Essay | Essay (3500 words) | 1-6, 8-9 | Referral/deferral period |
Indicative learning resources - Basic reading
Basic reading:
Primary texts
Students must buy the following core texts in the editions mentioned below:
Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, ed. Suzanne Gossett, Revels Student Edition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000)
John Milton, The Major Works, ed. Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg (Oxford: OUP, 2008)
William Shakespeare, Coriolanus, ed. Peter Holland, Arden Shakespeare Third Series (Arden, 2013)
William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1, ed. David Scott Kastan, Arden Shakespeare Third Series (Arden, 2002)
William Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, ed. Giorgio Melchiori, Arden Shakespeare Third Series (Arden, 1999)
The following core texts are in the Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th edition, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al (W.W. Norton and Company, 2012):
Robert Herrick, selected poetry
Ben Jonson, “To Penshurst”
Andrew Marvell, “Mower” poems
The following core texts and all additional extracts and images are provided on ELE:
Abiezer Coppe, First Fiery Flying Roll
Eleanor Davies, “Belshazzar’s Feast”
Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, Book 1, Song 1
Robert Greene, selected conny catching pamphlet
Ben Jonson, Love’s Welcome (masque)
Edmund Spenser, Shepherd’s Calendar, “December Eclogue”
Peter Mundy, Travels (England, Wales, India)
Satires by Joseph Hall, Ben Jonson
Gerrard Winstanley et al, True Levellers Standard Advanced
Module has an active ELE page?
Yes
Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources
Web based and electronic resources:
Early English Books Online: http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home
Jonson’s Works (Cambridge Edition): http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/
Spenser’s Works (Luminarium): http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/shepheard.html
Milton’s Works (resource page): https://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/iemls/postprint/CCM2Biblio.html#335
Oxford Scholarship Online: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/
JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/
Early Modern Literary Studies: https://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/journal/index.php/emls
Indicative learning resources - Other resources
Selected critical reading
Appelbaum, Robert. Aguecheek’s Beef, Belch’s Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections: Literature, Culture, and Food Among the Early Moderns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Goldstein, David B. Eating and Ethics in Shakespeare’s England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Laroque, Francois. Shakespeare’s Festive World: Elizabethan Seasonal Entertainment and the Professional Stage. Trans. Janet Lloyd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
McRae, Andrew. God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500-1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Mukherjee, Ayesha. Penury into Plenty: Dearth and the Making of Knowledge in Early Modern England. London and New York: Routledge, 2015.
Thirsk, Joan. Food in Early Modern England: Phases, Fads, Fashions, 1500-1760. London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006.
Available as distance learning?
No
Origin date
09/02/2017
Last revision date
12/02/2018
Key words search
Food and literature, Renaissance, Civil War, England, Shakespeare, Jonson, Milton