Beginnings of the English Renaissance and literature of the 16th century.

This course aims to elucidate England’s Renaissance or “re-birth” through asking, and in some measure answering, a single defining question: How did the makers of sixteenth-century English literature manage to fabricate a transmissible corpus with all the authority and staying-power of a centuries-long European tradition built upon classical foundations (the glories of Greece and Rome) while also cutting ties with the Catholic past in which its own—virtually its only--literary heritage was firmly anchored? We will investigate the literary production of the period—poetry and prose, canonical and little-known, authored and anonymous, in print and in manuscript—as well as something of the medieval legacy it jettisoned (or forcibly rehabilitated) to see just how it avoided the brand of “upstart” to constitute a claim to fame—a lasting monument—rivalling that of its continental competitors…all the while valorizing (as still for us) the new and innovative. Along the way you will become fluent in the idiom of Early Modern England, able to read early printed books and manuscripts, and ready to pursue your own paradigm-shifting discoveries in the vast archive of England’s literary remains. This class satisfies the "pre-1800" requirement for the English major.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills