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ENG 263: Early Modern

Writing resources; images and links for studying British literature before 1700

Petrarchan Poets (Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney)

A poem in Wyatt's handwriting

Edmund Spenser: The Faerie Queene, Book One

Spanish Empire (orange) around 1588, image from Cengage

John Donne (Metaphysical Poet)

First edition of Donne's poems (1633)
Man as Microcosm
Making gold leaf ("gold to airy thinness beat"), 1959 British documentary
Early Modern measuring/drawing compasses ("twin compasses")
Heavenly spheres within spheres (geocentric model of universe)
Virtual St. Paul's Cathedral
Hear a sermon preached outside by John Donne given on November 5, 1622.
Digital Donne Variorum

John Milton: Paradise Lost

Online text of Paradise Lost (Dartmouth College)
Excellent notes, good text to read if you need an online edition
Paradise Lost read aloud (Librivox)
Darkness Visible (U of Cambridge)
Excellent resources for reading Paradise Lost.
4.196: Satan "like a cormorant" (second disguise)
4.242: flowers in "beds and curious knots" (what the Garden is NOT like)
4.301: Adam's "hyacinthine locks" (like the flowers)

The Tempest (in performance)

William Shakespeare links

Shakespeare: versions of the yellow-stocking scene in Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night (100 minutes)

Cast and credits
Twelfth Night (ITV, 1970) with Alec Guinness, Tommy Steele, and Joan Plowright
An old British television production, but a good one. Abridged tastefully.

Supplement: Example of comic chaos: the stateroom scene from "A Night at the Opera" (1935, Marx Brothers)