Course details

Name: ENGL - 348

Title: RENAISSANCE LITERATURE

Section: 01

Semester: Fall - 2022

Credits: 3

Description:
The Renaissance, whose name means “rebirth,” refers to an unprecedented period of cultural transformation that stretched across Europe from approximately the early 1500s to the mid-1600s. This was the age of Shakespeare, the age of Galileo. In 1517, the same decade in which Michelangelo finished painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, Martin Luther inaugurated the Protestant Reformation in Germany. In 1649, while Thomas Hobbes wrote his pro-monarchy masterpiece /Leviathan/ in France, the monarchy was officially overthrown in England. The Renaissance saw the publication of both what many regard as the world’s first great novel (Cervantes's /Don Quixote/) and its last great epic poem (Milton's /Paradise Lost/).

This course will focus specifically on English prose, poetry, and drama in the Renaissance, including study of works by such major canonical authors as Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne, and Milton. Significant attention will also be paid to women writers of the period, from the author of the first sonnet sequence ever published in English (Anne Lock), to the first woman ever to be invited to attend a meeting of London’s Royal Society of scientists (Margaret Cavendish). During the Renaissance, English writers set about reimagining the very possibilities of literature, both what it could be and what role it might hope to play in the wider cultural transformations of the era. This will be the focus of the course.

Schedule: Tuesday From 2:30 pm To 5:00 pm

Graduation requirements:

• Any Literature (1e)
• Genre Study (Poetry)
• Pre-1700 (1a)
• Pre-1800 (1b)
• Pre-1900 (1c)
• Women and Gender Studies (3c)
• Pre-1800 British (TE 1b)

Teaching Faculty: Miller Jeffrey (millerje)

Is course canceled: No