English 246C

Other Readings and Media

See below.

Description

In this survey, we follow how authors from Francesco Petrarca and Thomas More to John Donne participated in the grand cultural project of the Renaissance, ostensibly defined by the belief that consuming and producing culture would elevate human beings above their natural state. Many of our authors supported the project; some opposed it fervently. But willingly or not, everyone we read during the semester contributed to it, if only by virtue of recording their impressions, thoughts, feelings, and fancies in writing. In addition to the works of Petrarca, Wyatt, Philip and Mary Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Donne, among others, we will also explore how scholarly views about the Renaissance as a cultural project have changed and developed from Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy to New Historicism and beyond.

The required books for the course are Greenblatt, ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume B: The Sixteenth and the Early Seventeenth Century (New York: Norton, 2012) Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ed. Peter Holland (Oxford, 2008) and The Merchant of Venice, ed. Jay L. Halio (Oxford, 2008). [If you already own either the Oxford or the Norton Shakespeare, no need to purchase separate copies of these two plays.] I will supplement the Norton by posting both primary and secondary readings on bCourses.

This course satisfies the Group 2 (Medieval through Sixteenth Century) requirement.