British Literature I (Anglo-Saxon Period through the 18th Century)

Course Description

ENL2012 – British Literature I is a 3-credit lecture course that surveys major British literature from the Anglo-Saxon period through the 18th-century Enlightenment (typically through approximately 1750–1800). Students read representative poems, plays, prose, and drama from the canon's most influential early British authors, develop critical reading and interpretive skills, and analyze the historical, cultural, religious, and intellectual contexts that shaped the literature of the British Isles before the Romantic movement.

The course sits within the Florida Statewide Course Numbering System (SCNS) under English > Literature > English Literature and is offered at approximately 28 Florida public institutions, including all major Florida College System institutions and the State University System. It is a companion to ENL2022 – British Literature II (Romantic period to the present), and the two courses together provide the standard British literary survey sequence.

ENL2012 fulfills several Florida college requirements: it counts toward general education humanities, satisfies the writing-across-the-curriculum requirement (Florida State Board of Education Rule 6A-10.030, the "Gordon Rule") for 6,000 words of writing, and articulates seamlessly into Florida State University System English majors. A grade of C or higher is required for the course to satisfy these requirements.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

Upon successful completion of ENL2012, students will be able to:

• Read and interpret representative texts from the Anglo-Saxon, medieval, Renaissance, 17th-century, Restoration, and 18th-century British literary periods.
• Identify and describe the defining characteristics, conventions, and themes of each major literary period covered.
• Analyze how literary works reflect and respond to their historical, political, religious, and cultural contexts, including the formation of the English nation, the Reformation, the English Civil War and Restoration, and the rise of the Enlightenment.
• Apply literary terminology (genre, form, meter, image, metaphor, symbol, tone, voice, allegory, satire) accurately in analysis.
• Distinguish among major genres — epic, romance, lyric and narrative poetry, drama (Renaissance and Restoration), the essay, the early novel — and their period-specific conventions.
• Compose analytical essays with clear theses, well-developed arguments, textual evidence, MLA documentation, and standard academic English — totaling at least 6,000 words across the term.
• Engage with secondary criticism at an introductory level, integrating sources responsibly into written work.
• Read literature in earlier forms of English (Middle English, Early Modern English) with appropriate annotation and glossing support.
• Participate in class discussion with informed, evidence-based contributions.

Optional Outcomes

Depending on instructor specialty and institutional emphasis, students may also:

• Apply specific literary-critical frameworks (formalism, historicism, feminist criticism, ecocriticism, religious criticism) to assigned texts.
• Investigate women writers of the period (Margery Kempe, Aphra Behn, Anne Finch, Mary Wollstonecraft, the early novelists).
• Engage with the development of the novel as a literary form in the late 17th and 18th centuries.
• Trace thematic threads (faith and doubt, kingship, the soul, gender, the natural world) across the period.
• Conduct independent literary research using library databases (MLA International Bibliography, JSTOR, Project MUSE).
• Engage in detail with Shakespeare as a major author, reading multiple plays and selected sonnets.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• The Anglo-Saxon Period (c. 450–1066): Old English poetry; Beowulf; "The Wanderer," "The Seafarer," "The Dream of the Rood"; the elegiac and heroic traditions; Bede and early Christian writing.
• The Medieval Period (1066–1500): The Norman Conquest and the development of Middle English; Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (typically the General Prologue and selected tales); Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Margery Kempe and the mystical tradition; the medieval lyric; the morality play (Everyman).
• The English Renaissance (c. 1500–1660): Humanism and the English Reformation; Sir Thomas More's Utopia; the sonnet sequence (Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare); Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene; Christopher Marlowe; William Shakespeare's plays and sonnets; the metaphysical poets (Donne, Herbert, Marvell); Ben Jonson and the Cavalier poets; John Milton's Paradise Lost.
• The Restoration and 18th Century (1660–1800): John Dryden; the rise of the periodical essay (Addison and Steele's Spectator); Aphra Behn's Oroonoko; Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal and Gulliver's Travels; Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock and Essay on Man; Samuel Johnson; the rise of the English novel (Defoe, Richardson, Fielding); Mary Wollstonecraft.
• Literary Form and Genre: Epic and romance; the sonnet; the morality play; Renaissance and Restoration drama; the metaphysical lyric; the heroic couplet; the periodical essay; the early novel; satire.
• Historical and Cultural Context: The English Reformation; the Tudor monarchy; the English Civil War and Interregnum; the Restoration; the Glorious Revolution; the Enlightenment; the rise of the British Empire.
• Critical Reading and Writing: Close reading; thesis development; argumentative essay structure; integrating textual evidence; MLA citation and documentation; revision.

Optional Topics

• Women Writers Across the Period: Margery Kempe, Mary Sidney Herbert, Aphra Behn, Anne Finch, Mary Astell, Mary Wollstonecraft.
• Sustained Shakespeare: Multiple plays in depth, often paired with sonnets and contemporaries.
• Genre Studies: Sustained focus on the sonnet sequence, the metaphysical lyric, Restoration comedy, or the rise of the novel.
• The English Bible and Religious Writing: Wycliffe, Tyndale, the King James Bible, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.
• Literary Theory at an Introductory Level: Reader-response, historicism, gender theory.
• Major Author Study: A unit devoted to a single canonical author (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Swift).

Resources & Tools

• Most-adopted textbook: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volumes A, B, and C (covering the Middle Ages, the 16th and early 17th centuries, and the Restoration and 18th century) — the dominant textbook across Florida institutions.
• Alternatives: The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volumes 1A, 1B, and 1C; The Broadview Anthology of British Literature; OpenStax-aligned open-access course packs and the Oxford Anthology of English Literature.
• Style and writing references: The MLA Handbook (current edition); The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms; A Writer's Reference by Diana Hacker.
• Library and research tools: MLA International Bibliography, JSTOR, Project MUSE, Early English Books Online (EEBO), Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), the Oxford English Dictionary online — all available through Florida college library subscriptions.
• Open digital resources: The British Library's "Discovering Literature" portal (free, period-organized); the Folger Shakespeare Library's free editions of all plays (folger.edu); Project Gutenberg; the Luminarium portal for medieval, Renaissance, and 17th-century literature; the Norton anthology's free supplemental online materials.
• Writing support: Institution writing centers (typically free, walk-in or appointment); Purdue OWL for MLA documentation guidance.

Career Pathways

While ENL2012 is a single survey course rather than a vocational program, the analytical, writing, and interpretive skills it builds are foundational for these career pathways relevant to Florida's economy:

• K–12 English Teacher — pathway through Florida English Education BS degrees with subsequent state certification.
• Editor and Writer — Florida's publishing, journalism, communications, and corporate-content sectors.
• Lawyer — humanities preparation for law school; reading-and-writing-intensive courses build core legal-analysis skills.
• Librarian / Information Professional — pathway through MLIS programs (FSU, USF, UF).
• Communications and Public Relations Specialist — broad demand across Florida industries.
• Higher Education and Research — pathway through MA and PhD programs in English, Comparative Literature, or Renaissance Studies.
• Theatre and Dramaturgy — Shakespeare and Renaissance drama remain core repertory; Florida's theatre scene includes Asolo Repertory (Sarasota), Orlando Shakes, and others.

Special Information

The Gordon Rule and Writing Requirements

ENL2012 is designated under Florida State Board of Education Rule 6A-10.030 (the Gordon Rule) as a course requiring 6,000 words of writing for credit toward the writing requirement. This typically means 4–6 substantive analytical essays totaling 6,000+ polished words, plus shorter response writing. A grade of C or higher is required for the course to count toward Gordon Rule satisfaction; a C-minus is not sufficient.

Articulation and Transfer

ENL2012 articulates to all Florida SUS institutions and satisfies a 3-credit humanities general education requirement and the writing component of the AA degree. It is required or strongly recommended for the English major at most SUS English departments. ENL2012 is not a prerequisite for ENL2022, and the two courses can be taken in either order or independently.

Reading Earlier Forms of English

ENL2012 includes literature in Middle English (Chaucer, the Gawain poet) and Early Modern English (Shakespeare, Milton). Students typically read these texts with annotation and glossing support; instructors do not expect students to translate independently from Old English (which is presented only in modern translation). Some institutions briefly introduce Middle English pronunciation and reading practices.

Prerequisites

The standard prerequisite is ENC1101 (Composition I) with a minimum grade of C or test-score equivalent. Some institutions also recommend (but do not require) ENC1102. ENL2022 is not a prerequisite for ENL2012 — the two courses can be taken in either order.

Course Format and Workload

ENL2012 is typically a lecture-discussion course meeting three hours per week. Expect 100–200 pages of reading per week, 4–6 analytical essays, possibly midterm and final exams, and active class participation. Reading load is sustained — keeping current with the assigned readings is essential, as the course moves through extensive material across multiple periods. Some readings (Milton's Paradise Lost, Spenser's Faerie Queene, Shakespeare's plays) are quite long and intellectually demanding.

Course Code Variations

Florida institutions title this course variously: "British Literature I," "English Literature I," "Survey of English Literature: Medieval to 1750," and "English Literature to 1750" all refer to the same SCNS course. The period coverage (Anglo-Saxon through Enlightenment) is consistent across institutions, though the relative weight given to each period varies.