76-331 Renaissance Literary and Cultural Studies

Units: 9.0 Department: English Related URLs: http://hss.cmu.edu/HTML/departments/engl Topics will vary by semester. Consult the Course Descriptions provided by the Department each semester for current offerings. Example: X-Files of the Seventeenth Century. During the 17th century, ghosts, monsters, prodigies, demons, and other strange phenomena-many of so-called "preternatural" occurrences-were becoming the object of overlapping (and sometimes conflicting) forms of explanation. Whereas some of these phenomena could be explained philosophically-with reference to natural causes-others belonged to religious debate or seemed exclusively to exist in the imagination. Using a broad range of texts, we will examine the widespread interest in the preternatural in seventeenth century culture, exploring the political, religious, and ideological consequences of this fascination. Texts will include images of natural "marvels" and "monstrosities," collections of "curiosities," plays by William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, utopian fiction by Margaret Cavendish, selections from Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, seventeenth century crime pamphlets, philosophical texts by Francis Bacon, Robert Hooke's images from the microscope, readings in Renaissance and classical poetics, and various religious texts. Students can expect the reading for this class to be demanding but interesting.

Popularity index Rank for this semester: #0 Rank in this department: #0   Students also scheduled 79-104 Introduction to World History 48-132 Architectural Drawing I 80-135 Introduction to Political Philos 76-386 Language & Culture 36-201 Statistical Reasoning and Practice 80-100 What Philosophy Is 76-487 On-line Information Design 76-488 On-Line Information Design Lab 99-102 Computing Skills Workshop 76-142 English Freshman Seminar: Experimen...

Spring 2005 times

No sections available for semester Spring 2005.