ENG 325 - Renaissance Worlds on Page and Stage (1)

Step into the literary culture of the English Renaissance, when Europeans’ view of the self and the world was profoundly altered by encounters, exchanges, and violent clashes with people of unfamiliar religious, racial, ethnic backgrounds. Study the poetic and dramatic works of the irreverent Christopher Marlowe, venerated knight and sonneteer Philip Sidney, the first English professional woman poet Aemilia Lanyer, city wits Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker, etc., and explore how they brought to life distant and closet landscapes and cultures, and how they used them as metaphors for intellectual, civic, religious, and erotic inquiry. Breach the divide of the centuries to place these surprisingly relevant old texts in dialogue with the burning issues of our times. Practice analyzing dramatic dialogue and poetic expression, collaborate in historical research and creative experiment, play with book craft and develop letterpress printing skills, and develop the editing skills to help newcomers to these texts navigate their enticing contents.

The class can function as a Research Seminar fulfilling the capstone requirement for the Literature and Society, and the Multimedia and Digital Writing concentrations of the English major.

  Prerequisite: Writing designated (W) course, or ENG 201 , ENG 215 , or ENG 225   Alternate years or every third year.
(Humanities) (Writing Encounter)