Renaissance Non-Dramatic Literature

Introduction

This course focuses on the remarkable flourishing of intellectual and literary life that occurred in Britain in the time of the Tudors. The Tudor monarchs ruled successfully—if sometimes with appalling ruthlessness—over a nation free of civil war and protected from foreign invasion. Britain’s political, military, and economic power rose for over a century to make it, for the first time, a major player in European cultural and political life.

The greatest explosion of the literary imagination took place in the “wooden O’s” built just south of the Thames, beyond the city boundaries of London. The drama of the period, and especially that of Shakespeare, is such an overwhelming cultural presence as almost to eclipse the other literary achievements of the period. In this course we will, more or less arbitrarily, take the drama off the table in order to attend to the development of the other major literary genres in the English Renaissance: the lyric and narrative poetry, the fiction, and the discursive prose.

The design of the course falls into two major sections. The first half focuses on works by a range of authors, from Sir (or Saint) Thomas More to the less known Thomas Deloney. Though not meant as a comprehensive survey, it does include works in the major genres to suggest the range, power, and technical brilliance of the literature of the British Renaissance.

The second half focuses on the work of one extremely important and characteristic figure of the period: the courtier, soldier,and writer Sir Philip Sidney. Sidney almost defined the “Renaissance man” for England, producing its first and perhaps greatest sonnet cycle, its most important work of fiction, and the country’s first great piece of literary criticism. He then went on, at Elizabeth’s appointment, to serve as governor of a city in the Netherlands, where, at the age of 31, he was killed in battle defending the city from attack by the Spanish. Sir Philip was survived by his sister, Mary Sidney Herbert, and a niece, Mary Wroth—probably the two most brilliant women writers of their time—with whom the course concludes.

Goals

As a result of taking this course, it is hoped that you will:

• Develop a solid overview of the literary life of Renaissance England as set against the background of the intellectual, political, religious, and social forces of the period.


• Develop a sharper sense of the cultural continuities and discontinuities between the period and our own time.


• Develop a deeper familiarity with at least one major British writer.


• Learn to read with an eye toward discerning and articulating the intellectual and cultural forces at work in a text.


• Learn to use secondary sources to enrich your own understanding of literature.


• Sharpen your skills as researchers and critics so as to take part in the continuing discussion that constitutes the discipline of literary studies.