ENG 3850 - Early Modern Studies: Renaissance to the Enlightenment
This course examines the literature of early modern England in the context of its tumultuous intellectual, historical, political, and cultural developments from the 16th through the 18th centuries. Depending on the selected topic, scope, or theme, course readings may focus on one major literary movement in England, such as the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery, or the Enlightenment, with consideration given to related developments in Europe, or they may trace key literary, artistic, religious, and philosophic, and scientific advances across several periods, including the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, the Commonwealth (or Interregnum), the Restoration, the Augustan Age, and the Age of Sensibility. Students will explore how classical motifs and innovative forms characterized the aesthetics of early modern England; how authors wrote for both public expression and private meditation; how print culture emerged as the dominant means of literary production; and how poetry, prose, and drama encouraged audiences to discover and define their social identities in new ways. Authors central to this course are Sir Thomas Wyatt, the Earl of Surrey (Henry Howard), Sir Philip Sidney, Mary Sidney, Elizabeth I, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, John Donne, William Herbert, Aemilia Lanyer, Lady Mary Wroth, Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, Andrew Marvell, John Milton, John Dryden, John Locke, John Bunyan, Aphra Behn, Isaac Newton, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, and Samuel Johnson.
Credit Hours: 3
Term Offered: Fall of odd years
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