The Renaissance

Catalog description

HUMN530 provides an overview of major works of the Renaissance, and offers a detailed study of its primary thinkers. Issues include the birth of rationalism, individualism, skepticism, and emergent secularism. Questions address the inherent tensions between intellectual tradition and change, and the increasing dominance of the sphere of science. Readings for this course include: Petrarch's Selections from the Canzoniere and Other Works; Elizabeth I’s Poems; John Donne's Selected Poems; Machiavelli's The Prince; Francois Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel; Michael de Montaigne's Essays; Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's Don Quixote; Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus; Shakespeare's Sonnets and The Tempest; Edmund Spenser’s “Letter to Raleigh” and The Mutabilitie Cantos.