ENGL 372: Renaissance Heroes, Lovers, Explorers

Course Description

England in the Renaissance experienced something of a Golden Age of literary achievement, producing such literary giants as Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Milton. This course surveys the culture and the literature of this remarkable period, exploring the issues that occupied Renaissance imaginations: exploration and ‘new worlds’ (both real and fictive), witchcraft, selfhood and identity, gender and ethnicity, love and poetic immortality, class mobility, civil disorder and monarchical rule, and capitalism in the burgeoning metropolis of London. The course will draw on a wide variety of genres and materials, including love lyrics, spiritual quests, prototypes of the novel, cultural documents, stage plays, and court entertainments for royalty. (OC).