MA Orals List -- 16th Century

MA Orals Reading List ‑‑ Sixteenth Century

Revised October 2007

 Choose at least ten works of literature, and at least two works of criticism.

A. Shorter verse (at least one):

  1. Skelton, Philip Sparrow, Tunning, and Bowge of Court.
  2. Wyatt and Surrey, selections in English Sixteenth‑Century Verse, ed. Sylvester, or a comparable collection.
  3. Gascoigne and Ralegh, selections in Sylvester or elsewhere.
  4. Spenser (not to be taken with B2), Epithalamion, Shepherd's Calendar, Amoretti.

 B. Longer verse (at least one):

  1. Marlowe, Hero and Leander, and Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis.
  2. Spenser, Faerie Queene I or III, and Mutability Cantos (not to be taken with A4).
  3. Sidney, Astrophil and Stella (not to be taken with both C1 and D3).
  4. Shakespeare, Sonnets.

 C. Fictional prose (at least one):

  1. Sidney, Old Arcadia or (in its non‑composite version) New Arcadia (not to be taken with both B3 and D3).
  2. Gascoigne, Adventures of Master F. J. (not to be taken with both A3 and E(a)4).
  3. Lyly, Euphues, or Lodge, Rosalynde.
  4. Nashe, Unfortunate Traveller.

 D. Intellectual prose (at least one):

  1. More, Utopia.
  2. Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity I.
  3. Foxe's Book of Martyrs and /or Holinshed's Chronicles (selections TBA).
  4. Sidney, Apology for Poetry (not to be taken with both B3 and C1).

 E. Drama, non‑Shakespearean (at least two):

(a) Feature no more than one from this group:

  1. Everyman.
  2. Udall, Ralph Roister Doister.
  3. Sackville and Norton, Gorboduc.
  4. Gascoigne, Supposes (not to be taken with both A3 and E2).
  5. Woodstock.
  6. Mucedorus.

(b) Feature no more than one from this group:

  1. Lyly, Endymion.
  2. Peele, Arraignment of Paris.
  3. Greene, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay.
  4. Kyd, Spanish Tragedy.
  5. Jonson, Every Man in his Humor.
  6. Dekker, Shoemaker's Holiday.

(c) Feature no more than one from this group:

  1. Marlowe, 1 Tamburlaine.
  2. Marlowe,  Doctor Faustus.

 F. Shakespeare (at least three):

  1. Comedy of Errors.
  2. Richard III.
  3. Richard II.
  4. 1 Henry IV.
  5. Romeo and Juliet.
  6. Julius Caesar.
  7. Midsummer Night's Dream.
  8. As You Like It.
  9. Merchant of Venice.
  10. Much Ado About Nothing.
  11. Twelfth Night.
  12. Hamlet.

 Critical works (exemplorum gratiâ; may be supplemented from the Ph.D. critical readings list):

  1. Julia Briggs, This Stage Play World, 2nd ed. (1997)
  2. Margaret Ferguson, et al., Rewriting the Renaissance (1996)
  3. Northrop Frye, A Natural Perspective (1965)
  4. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self‑Fashioning (1980)
  5. Thomas Greene, The Light in Troy (1982)
  6. Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood (1992)
  7. William Kerrigan and Gordon Braden, The Idea of the Renaissance (1989)
  8. Katharine Maus, Inwardness and Theater (1995)