The PhD Oral Examination
in the
Renaissance Period
(updated 05-May-2004)
As a general rule candidates for the Ph.D. orals should work up an orals list with the area adviser comprising approximately 40 primary texts (books or the equivalent) and distributed more or less equally among poetry, prose, and drama. Individual lists should feature 5 plays by Shakespeare, in various genres. These English Renaissance lists should reflect the importance of classical learning, religious traditionalism and Reformation controversy, and other aspects of England's engagement with the culture of Europe at large. In addition to forty primary texts, lists must include six secondary works.
Poetry
Petrarch
Henryson
Dunbar
Charles d'Orleans
Skelton
Wyatt
Surrey
Gascoigne
Sidney
Spenser
Marlowe
Ralegh
Daniel
Drayton
Greville
Lanyer
Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke
Shakespeare
Donne
Jonson
Wroth
Giles Fletcher
Carew
Suckling
Herrick
Lovelace
Herbert
Vaughan
Crashaw
Elizas Babes (Anon., 1652)
Traherne
Cowley
Milton
Marvell
Prose (Non-Fiction)
Erasmus, Praise of Folly
Machiavelli, The Prince
Castiglione, The Courtier
More, History of King Richard III / Dialogue of Comfort in Tribulation
Roper, Life of More
Cavendish, Life of Wolsey
Elyot, Book of the Governor
Starkey, A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset
Wilson, The Art of Rhetoric
Ascham, The Scholemaster
Smith, De Republica Anglorum
Book of Common Prayer
Montaigne, Essays
Hooker, Law of Ecclesiastical Polity
Elizabeth I's speeches
Sidney, Defense of Poetry
Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie
Camden, Britannia / Remains Concerning Britain
James I's writings
King James Bible (selections)
Donne, Paradoxes / Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions / Sermons
Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy (sample selections: Democritus Junior to the Reader; I.i.2. Division of the Body, Humours, and Spirits; I.i.7. Of the Inward Senses; III.ii. 2. Love or Heroical Melancholy)
Bacon, Essays / The Advancement of Learning / Novum Organum
Browne, Religio Medici / Urn Burial / Gardens of Cyrus / Pseudodoxia Epidemica
"Charles I," Eikon Basilike
Taylor, Holy Dying
Milton, Of Education / The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce / Areopagitica / political writings / De Doctrina Christiana
Filmer, Patriarcha / Harrington, Oceana / Sexby, Killing No Murder / other political tracts (as in Wooton's Divine Right and Democracy )
Hobbes, Leviathan
Sprat, History of the Royal Society
Prose (Fiction)
Malory , Morte d'Arthur
More, Utopia
Gascoigne, The Adventures of Master FJ
Lyly, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit
Sidney, Arcadia [Old and / or New]
Deloney, Jack of Newbury
Greene, Pandosto: The Triumph of Time
Nashe , The Unfortunate Traveller
Wroth, Urania
Cavendish, The Blazing World
Drama
Henry Medwall, Nature / Fulgens and Lucrece
Everyman
Skelton, Magnyfycence
Tudor Interludes ( Hick Scorner, Youth ... )
Palsgrave, Acolastus
Udall, Ralph Roister Doister
Gascoigne, Supposes
Mucedorus
Sackville and Norton, Gorboduc
Peele, The Old Wives Tale
Greene, George a Greene / Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay / James IV
Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy
Marlowe, Tamburlaine / Edward II / The Jew of Malta / Dr. Faustus
Nashe, Summer's Last Will and Testament
Woodstock
Arden of Feversham
The Yorkshire Tragedy
Shakespeare (5 or more plays)
Jonson (2 or more plays) / (1 or more masques)
Marston, The Malcontent
Chapman, Bussy d'Ambois
Non-Jonsonian masques (as in Lindley's Court Masques anthology)
Heywood, A Woman Killed with Kindness
Beaumont, The Knight of the Burning Pestle
Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster / A King and No King
Dekker, The Shoemaker’s Holiday
Cary, Miriam
The Revenger’s Tragedy
Middleton, The Changeling / A Chaste Maid in Cheapside / Women Beware Women
Webster, The Duchess of Malfi / The White Devil
Massinger, A New Way to Pay Old Debts
Ford, Perkin Warbeck / ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore
Secondary Works (3 from each category)
Literary History and Criticism
Barkan, The Gods Made Flesh (1986)
Braden, Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition (1985) / Petrarchan Love and the Continental Renaissance (1999)
Cave, The Cornucopian Text (1979)
Cummings, The Literary Culture of the Reformation (2002)
Ferguson, Quilligan, and Vickers, eds., Rewriting the Renaissance (1986)
Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning (1980)
Greene, The Light in Troy (1982)
Guibbory, Ceremony and Community from Herbert to Milton (1998)
Hadfield, Literature, Travel, and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance (1998)
Helgerson, Self-Crowned Laureates (1983) / Forms of Nationhood (1992)
King, Reformation Literature: the Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition (1982)
Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (1993)
Maus, Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance (1995)
Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, rev. ed. (2002)
Orgel, Impersonations (1996)
Paster, The Body Embarrassed (1993)
Rebhorn, The Emperor of Men's Minds (1995)
Sawday, The Body Emblazoned (1995)
Schoenfeldt, Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England (1999)
Wall, The Imprint of Gender (1993) / Staging Domesticity (2002)
Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, rev. ed. (1966)
Political, Social, and Intellectual History
Amussen, An Ordered Society (1988)
Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (1992)
Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (1979)
Gent, ed., Albion's Classicism (1995)
Grafton and Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities (1986)
Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution, rev. ed. (1997)
Jardine, Worldly Goods (1996)
Jardine / Brotton, Global Interests (2000)
Kerrigan and Braden, The Idea of the Renaissance (1989)
Rogers, The Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry, and Politics in the Age of Milton (1996)
Schochet, Patriarchalism in Political Thought (1988)
Shuger, The Renaissance Bible (1994)
Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (1996)
Sommerville, Sex and Subjection (1995)
Stallybrass / Jones, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (2000)
Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth (1977/1999)
Targoff, Common Prayer (2001)
Thomas, Man and the Natural World (1996) / Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971)
Wrightson, Earthly Necessities (2000)