The study of the poetry and nonfiction prose of British writers during the Victorian era (1837- 1901), including prose authors such as Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and John Ruskin, and poets such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The course considers these works in the context of Victorian Britain's preoccupation with questions about politics, education, art, science, religion, and the role of women.

A study of the poetry created by the six major poets grouped under the term romantic: William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron (George Gordon), Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats. The course considers both the poetry and critical theories of these influential authors. Graduate students concentrate on the poetry and criticism of one particular poet.

The study of selected dramatic works written in English prior to the closing of the theatres in 1642, including medieval mystery and morality plays and works by Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline playwrights, excluding Shakespeare.

A study of the poetry, non-fiction prose, and novels of the major writers of the neoclassical period, including such authors as John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, and Samuel Richardson.

A survey of women's writing in the seventeenth century which examines the poetry, prose, and dramatic works of literary figures such as Lady Mary Wroth, Aemilia Lanyer, Anne Bradstreet, Katherine Philips, Margaret Cavendish, and Aphra Behn. The writings of these early-modern women are examined in order to understand how they address not only what it is to be a woman in early- modern times, but what it is to be human, an activity which involves the exploration of historical practices, philosophical concepts, political theories, and theological tenets.

The major poetic works and selected prose of Milton are read in light of his claim to be the delegated spokesperson for God and Parliament in early-modern England. Milton's works are seen both to reflect the tension and trauma of the Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration, and to participate in shaping a new state and new modes of existence.

Students study seven plays by William Shakespeare (representative histories, tragedies, comedies, and romances) in addition to his narrative poem Venus and Adonis. Shakespeare's plays are considered as both established literary works and as scripts written for performance, and students apply different critical approaches to his works in an attempt to discover the source and nature of the play's aesthetic power and dramatic force. The course attempts to determine whether William Shakespeare is, as some have claimed, the greatest and most influential writer of all time.

A survey of European drama and prose classics from the thirteenth to the twentieth century, this course explores and critically evaluates the shift in worldviews from Dante's Christian humanism to Kafka's and Camus' modern existentialist view of human existence. In order to provide depth to our analysis of the works and to highlight the significance of the shift in worldview, the works will be discussed in their historical, philosophical, and cultural contexts, in combination with close reading and various theoretical interpretative approaches.

Focuses on the rich and varied visionary and mystical literature of the early, high and late Middle Ages, including the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, Richard of St. Victor, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Richard Rolle, the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, and Meister Eckhart. The influence of early theologians and philosophers (such as Origen, Plotinus, and Augustine) on these mystics is considered in detail, as is the influence of the medieval mystics on mystical thinkers of Renaissance Europe (including Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross).

Literature has been at the centre of the human story from its beginnings as recorded in ancient sacred texts to its current study as cultural narrative with transformative and transcendent possibilities for interpretation and creativity. This course will explore literary themes integral to the pursuit of Christian spirituality, past and present. The movement to interdisciplinary interpretation and literary hermeneutics demands that students, as readers of text, understand the role that Christian thought and aesthetics have played in their influencing of contemporary literature.