[Milton-L] Seventeenth-Century Brit Lit Textbooks

[Jason Kerr]

Jeff,

I'm teaching a similar course now (though only poetry) and came up against
this issue as well, so I look forward to hearing ideas from other list
members. Meanwhile, I'll throw a few of my own into the ring.

My course is an upper-division elective, in a seminar format. I opted to
focus on a few writers in greater depth, bringing in works by other poets to
provide context. Given that an omnibus anthology like Norton or Longman
would cover too little of what I wanted to work on and too much of
everything else, I opted to go a different route.

I ordered the Penguin edition of Herbert's poems, Jean Klene's edition of
The Southwell-Sibthorpe Commonplace Book, Carey's revised edition of
Milton's shorter poems, and Nigel Smith's edition of Marvell's poems. I
consciously did not order an edition of Donne; I wanted to foreground
manuscript and print circulation as contexts for the poems, so I'm using the
resources at Digital Donne (digitaldonne.tamu.edu), which now include the
editions of 1633, 1635, and 1669, along with the St. Paul ms. in facsimile
with transcriptions alongside. For other poems, I'm drawing on EEBO and
other online resources (e.g. Luminarium). Granted, these don't often have
the helpful notes and glosses of a modern print edition, but part of what
I'm trying to teach my students is appreciation for how texts come to them
(including often tedious editorial labors of love). So far, the students are
responding very well.

I'm not teaching all of PL in this course, but I like Lewalski's recent
Blackwell edition: old spelling and punctuation, with just the right balance
of notes. I'm looking forward to Stella Revard's edition of the shorter
poems in the same series (which is still forthcoming, unless I'm mistaken).

While we're on this topic, I'd love suggestions for a good one-volume
teaching edition of Dryden. The Longman Annotated edition is excellent, but
it's not economical in terms of money or space. I ended up just putting it
and the Norton Anthology on reserve (especially since my students were
already ponying up the cash for Carey and Smith).

Jason A. Kerr

On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 1:19 PM, Jeffrey Theis <jtheis at salemstate.edu>wrote:

> Dear Milton-L folks,
>
> I am going to teach a seventeenth-century British literature course this
> spring, and I'm looking for textbook recommendations. While the course is
> ostensibly on shorter poetry, I plan to include prose and all of Milton's
> PL. I'll be teaching the course at both the graduate and undergraduate
> levels, and I'll make adjustments accordingly.
>
> I'd be curious to hear if you use a one-stop textbook (and which one), a
> series of individual editions, packets to supplement, etc.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Jeff Theis
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Jeffrey S. Theis
> Assistant Professor; Department of English
> 311 Library (Office)
> Mailing Address:
>   Salem State College
>   352 Lafayette Street
>   Salem, MA 01970-5353
> Phone:(978) 542-6845
> E-Mail: jtheis at salemstate.edu
> Home Page: http://www.salemstate.edu/~jtheis/<http://www.salemstate.edu/%7Ejtheis/>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
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-- 
The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.

—Czeslaw Milosz, from "Ars Poetica?"
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