Early Modern Fiction and World-making

Catalog description

This course will explore the fiction of Renaissance and early modern Europe, with special focus on world-making that is, the creation of new, imagined alternative worlds that allow for political, social and religious comment on contemporary debates and history. These works combine fictional story-telling, social satire, philosophy, religion, allegory and popular tales (folk tales); they draw on multiple genres of argumentation and plot including romance, epic, utopian thinking and moments of realism and hyperrealism. We will look at how they modulate their historical contexts, including the rise of Protestantism, their relation to the Ottoman and Muslim worlds, and the European wars of religion. Readings will include: Boccaccio, The Decameron (selection of novellas); Erasmus, The Praise of Folly and selected Adages Dulce Bellum Inexpertis Festina Lente and Silenus Alcibiadis (Praise, 1509/ pub 1511); More, Utopia, 1516; Rabelais, Pantagruel and Gargantua 1532-1534 and selected chapters from The Third Book; Marguerite de Navarre, The Heptameron (selected novellas); Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book 3, Thomas Nashe, The Unfortunate Traveler and selections from English Rogue Pamphlets; Lazarillo de Tormes ; Cervantes, Dialogue of the Dogs, Don Quixote part 1; Margaret Cavendish, Convent of Pleasure; Natalie Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre and Fiction in the Archives, and Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, or Defoe's Moll Flanders.