Literature and Culture: The Renaissance

Catalog description

'Renaissance' evokes rebirth, specifically a recovery of pieces of pagan antiquity once lost. Yet while the Renaissance (1300-1700) was invested in classical Greece and Rome, it also was a period of enormous changes (the discovery and exploration of the Americas, a new print culture, the Copernican revolution, the replacement of feudalism and chivalry with mercantilism and gunpowder warfare, to name a few) which the classical past could not explain. Indeed, scholars often prefer the term Early Modern for the era so as to emphasize the ways the Renaissance produces modernity. This course will introduce students to the Renaissance, looking first at what factors produced and shaped it. It will consider what the Renaissance has meant across the disciplines: its refinement of historiography, its contributions to political science and philosophy, its theologies, its contributions to science and the fine arts, its landmark literary works. Finally, it will consider the ways the Renaissance produced modernity, and how we ourselves are indebted to the events and ideas of the period.