Utopian Cupcakes

Nancy Knowles, English and Writing

In Fall 2022, ENGL 371 British before 1800 focused on utopia, situating literary texts that address idealized values and social structures in their historical contexts, as well as practicing the literary analysis common to scholars in the field.

Readings included, in full and in part, Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Marie de France’s Lanval, Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, Thomas More’s Utopia, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, William Wycherley’s The Country Wife, Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and Olauda Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olauda Equiano. 

The final exam asked students to culminate their work in ENGL 371 by connecting a utopian idea of their own with the literature read over the term. They did this by decorating and discussing cupcakes, an approach developed by student Ellie Justice when she was a teaching assistant in ENGL 201 Shakespeare in Spring 2022 and selected by acclamation in ENGL 371. Students each completed a cupcake illustrating their utopian idea, discussed the cupcake in relation to three ENGL 371 texts and their historical moments, analyzed a passage from each text, and synthesized the passages with interpretation of the texts, their utopian idea, and the cupcake.