Renaissance Long List

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

Cummings, The Literary Culture of the Reformation (2002) 

Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, rev. ed. (2002) 

Wall, Staging Domesticity (2002) 

Braden, Petrarchan Love and the Continental Renaissance (1999) 

Schoenfeldt, Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England (1999) 

Guibbory, Ceremony and Community from Herbert to Milton (1998) 

Hadfield, Literature, Travel, and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance (1998) 

Orgel, Impersonations (1996) 

Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, rev. ed. (1966) 

Maus, Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance (1995) 

Rebhorn, The Emperor of Men's Minds (1995) 

Sawday, The Body Emblazoned (1995) 

Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood (1992) 

Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (1993) 

Paster, The Body Embarrassed (1993) 

Wall, The Imprint of Gender (1993)  

Barkan, The Gods Made Flesh (1986) 

Ferguson, Quilligan, and Vickers, eds., Rewriting the Renaissance (1986) 

Braden, Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition (1985)  

Helgerson, Self-Crowned Laureates (1983) 

Greene, The Light in Troy (1982) 

King, Reformation Literature: the Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition (1982) 

Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning (1980) 

Cave, The Cornucopian Text (1979) 

 

Political, Social, and Intellectual History

Targoff, Common Prayer (2001) 

Jardine / Brotton, Global Interests (2000) 

Stallybrass / Jones, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (2000) 

Wrightson, Earthly Necessities (2000) 

Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution, rev. ed. (1997) 

Jardine, Worldly Goods (1996) 

Rogers, The Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry, and Politics in the Age of Milton (1996) 

Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (1996) 

Thomas, Man and the Natural World (1996)  

Gent, ed., Albion's Classicism (1995) 

Sommerville, Sex and Subjection (1995) 

Shuger, The Renaissance Bible (1994) 

Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (1992) 

Kerrigan and Braden, The Idea of the Renaissance (1989) 

Amussen, An Ordered Society (1988) 

Schochet, Patriarchalism in Political Thought (1988) 

Grafton and Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities (1986) 

Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (1979) 

Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth (1977; 1999) 

Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971)