Paper Topics

ENGL 514/622

Dr. Fike

Here are some topics that would work nicely for your term papers. This list includes topics that previous students have written about successfully and others that I have added. The list reflects the course's emphasis on Marlowe, Spenser, and Shakespeare. Since ENGL 640 probably will not be offered while you are at Winthrop, and since Shakespeare is part of our course, I include below some topics from his plays that connect nicely to the Elizabethan period. (The course is not about Shakespeare's plays, so if you want to write about one of them, make sure that your topic has either strong historical underpinnings or a connection to a nondramatic work.)

Marlowe

• England's "sumptuary laws" in connection with Piers Gaveston from Marlowe's Edward II.
• Gaveston's violation of class norms in Edward II.
• The Neptune scene in H&L and homosexuality (a term not used in the Elizabethan period).
• Doctor Faustus and Prospero: the conjuring of Helen vs. the masque of Iris/Ceres/Juno (theme of chastity).
• Faustus and sexuality.
• Doctor Faustus as a critique of reason/humanism.
• Doctor Faustus in terms of the pope and Bruno (M's parody of Catholicism).
• Doctor Faustus from a Marxist point of view.
• Binaries in DF or Edward II.
• Faustus and doubling (psychological lens).
• Supposed appearances of real devils at performances of DF.

Spenser

• Una's wanderings in FQ, book 1.
• Una's veil.
• Redcrosse and St. Peter.
• Phaedria in FQ II: as a lesser Acrasia, her "lay" (song) in connection with Matthew 6; connections with Guyon's continence or temperance.
• Britomart at the House of Busirane and gender binarism.
• Artegall in FQ V, especially his captivity by Radigund.
• Britomart and cisgender.
• Britomart's visit to Merlin's cave.
• Guyon's trip through Mammon's Cave and the sin of curiosity: is he guilty of it?
• The ivory gate to Acrasia's Bower of Blisse in The Faerie Queene, book 2, canto 12.
• Trees in FQ I, esp. the oak ("oke").
• Duessa, Lucifera, and Mary Queen of Scots.

Shakespeare

• Kissing in The Courtier, Venus and Adonis, Doctor Faustus, and (possibly) Lanyer's "The Description of Cooke-ham."
•  Venus and Adonis and Freud's "oral stage."
• Shakespeare's Sonnets and Willobie His Avisa.
• Identity in Shakespeare's Sonnets, especially the Dark Lady: who was she, or who was the young man? Focus on a theory re. character or the Sonnets' date.
• Emilia Lanyer as the Dark Lady in Shakespeare's Sonnets.
• Caliban and the Irish problem.
• Malvolio in MFM and the Puritans' challenge to the theater (the topic gets you into attacks on poetry and the theater).
• Hero and Rosalind: How does Rosalind correct Hero's mistakes?

Lanyer

• Lanyer's "The Description of Cooke-ham" and Jonson's "To Penshurst."
• Lanyer's treatment of the 9 worthies in relation to Robert Chester's "Love's Martyr" (1601).
• Jesus's feminine elements.

Donne

• Donne's "The Ecstasy" in terms of the interdependence of body and soul.

Sidney

• Sidney and horsemanship. See especially the opening paragraph of his Defense of Poetry.

Other

• Or you could start with a critical approach such as postcolonialism or feminist theory and apply it to a text or texts. For example, postcolonialism might lead you into the literature of discovery (Hakluyt).
• It would also be possible to start with a text--either one that we are studying in class or one that interests you but is not on the calendar.
• Another possibility would be to discuss an Elizabethan text/author in connection with a text/author from another period.
• Richard Hakluyt's Discourse of Western Planting and scripture.