Can anyone think of some must know info for the cat. of British Lit. Elizabethan-Neoclassical time period?

Question

I'm reviewing for a class that I am going to have to take and I wanted to pick your brain about the important writers that spread over the Elizabethan era to the Neoclassical era. I'm going to try to do some additional research so that when the professor alludes to another text I'm not 100% lost. I have read almost everything of Shakespeare so I don't really need any info on him. I hate that guy Christopher Marlow (Homoeroticism isn't something that I really enjoy reading about). Anyone have some must reads drop me a line please. Thanks

Answer 1

That's quite a time span. Expressed simply in terms of the books your author might allude to, here's a short list:

Renaissance:

Spenser, The Fairy Queen (very long--read the intro and book one)
Sidney, Astrophil and Stella and Defense of Poetry
Ben Jonson, The Alchemist
Thomas Middleton, The Changeling or Women, Beware Women

Early 17th Century:
John Donne, Songs and Sonnets
Ben Jonson, Timber and Epigrams
Herrick, Hesperides
Marvell, Poems
Milton, Paradise Lost

Later 17th Century
Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel
Wycherley, The Country Wife
Shaftesbury, Letters
Rymer, Tragic Poets
Waller and Denham, Poems

Neoclassical
Pope, Essay on Man, Essay on Poetry, Rape of the Lock
(sorry, I don't know as much about the 18th Century)