Read the entire “Don’t Go to Art School” series:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
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Welcome back! For Year Two of our Nearly-Free English Degree, we’ll be covering the Old English through Renaissance times. Each “course” below is worth one credit.
You’ll need to pick three of them, for at least two of the groups, and then pick three electives. One of these other electives can be another literature class from any of the categories for any year, but two of them should be non-English courses from the selections that I’ll give you once we’ve covered the English ones.
For each course, you’ll follow the same work pattern: consult Wikipedia for the “lecture” before you read each book, and then do the reading, using the study techniques you developed in Year One. (Quiller-Couch’s methods or the highly recommended notebook-based self-study techniques used in the recommended but non-free Bauer title.)
Ready? Pick three classes:
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Option 1 | Old English: The Tale of Beowulf
• Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem
• The Translations of Beowulf by C. Tinker
• The Tale of Beowulf by W. Morris and A. Wyatt (prose translation)
• Beowulf by F. Gummere (verse translation)
• Beowulf: The Fight at Finssburh (original Old English)
Option 2 | Middle English: Legends of Arthurian Times
• The Age of Chivalry by T. Bullfinch
• The Handbook to English Heraldry by C. Boutell
• The Legends of King Arthur and his Knights by T. Malory and J. Knowles
• Le More D’Arthur by T. Malory
• Idylls of the Kings by A. Lord Tennyson
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by M. Twain
THE RENAISSANCE
Note: Project Gutenberg has a Complete Works of Shakespeare available here, as well as individual titles of the works listed. You may prefer to purchase an inexpensive Complete Works edition by another publisher at the store of your choosing; many of them contain images, linked table of contents and other goodies.
Option 3 | The Renaissance: Studies in Shakespeare 1 (Selected Comedies)
• As You Like It
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• The Taming of the Shrew
• The Tempest
• Twelfth Night
Option 4 | Studies in Shakespeare 2 (Selected Tragedies)
• Romeo and Juliet
• Julius Caesar
• Macbeth
• Hamlet
• King Lear
• Othello
Option 5 | Studies in Shakespeare 3 (Selected Histories)
• Henry IV, Part 1
• Henry IV, Part 2
• Henry V
• Richard II
• Richard II
• Henry VIII
Option 6 | Shakespeare’s Contemporaries
• The Spanish Curate by F. Beaumont and J. Fletcher
• The Noble Spanish Soldier by T. Dekker
• The Alchemist by B. Jonson
• Arden of Feversham by T. Kyd
• Hero and Leander by C. Marlowe
• The White Devil by J. Webster