Renaissance Literature: Texts and Contexts (ENGLM0037)
This unit will consider key Renaissance texts in relation to their wider historical context,
exploring the complex ways in which literary works take up, critique, and are in dialogue with
the cultural practices, debates, and technologies of their time. It will focus on: ideas about
sexuality, gender, and the body on stage and in medical texts; early modern theatres and their
impact on performance; early modern ideas about interiority; literary and cultural geography
and the ways in which identity is seen to shape, and be shaped by, encounters with space and
place.
The unit aims to give a broadened experience of the range and variety within Renaissance
literature and its comparable textual cultures, as well as providing an insight into the current
shape of Renaissance studies as a discipline. Students will learn to read literary texts
historically, developing a strong sense of the ways in which literature works within its broader
contexts. They will also learn to write critically about literary texts, and to develop their skills
in close and interdisciplinary textual analysis.
TEXTS FOR PURCHASE
Middleton and Dekker, The Roaring Girl (any edition)
William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford, The Witch of Edmonton (any edition)
John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (any edition)
Anthony Parr (ed.), Three Renaissance Travel Plays (Manchester: MUP, 2000)
(contains Brome, The Antipodes)
Philip Massinger, The Renegado, ed. by Michael Neill (London: Methuen, 2010)
Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World and Other Writings, ed. Kate Lilley (London:
Penguin, 1994)
Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (any edition; please note this is in the Norton Anthology of
English Literature)
COURSE SCHEDULE
Week 1
Introduction to Early Modern Literature: Gender, Performance, and Space
(LD)
Extracts from a variety of texts
Week 2
Early Modern Theatres and Performance (MW)
John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi
Week 3
Gender, Performance, & Desire: Roaring Girls and Witches (LD)
Middleton and Dekker, The Roaring Girl
William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford, The Witch of Edmonton
Judith Butler, ‘Imitation and Gender Insubordination’, in Henry Abelove,
Michele Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin, (eds.), The Lesbian and Gay
Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1993). (Blackboard)
Week 4
Travel and Theatre (LP)
Richard Brome, The Antipodes (in Three Renaissance Travel Plays, ed. Parr)
Anthony Parr, Introduction to Three Renaissance Travel Plays (read the
general introduction and the section on The Antipodes)
Ben Jonson, ‘To William Roe’
Other extracts to be put on Blackboard (please bring them to the seminar)
Week 5
How to Write an Essay
Week 6
Reading Week
Week 7
Travel, Romance, and Selfhood (LP)
Philip Massinger, The Renegado
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene Book 2, Canto XII
Michael Neill, Introduction to The Renegado (read the whole introduction)
Bernhard Klein, ‘Imaginary journeys: Spenser, Drayton, and the poetics of
national space’, in Literature, Mapping, and the Politics of Space in Early
Modern Britain, ed. by Andrew Gordon and Bernhard Klein (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 204-223. (On Blackboard.)
Week 8
Travel Writing and Science (EH)
Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World
Further short extracts from Bacon, The New Atlantis, William Dampier, A New
Voyage Round the World, Henry Neville, The Isle of Pines.
Week 9
The New World and the Captivity Narrative (EH)
Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave
Extracts from Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of
God and Thomas Phelps, A True Account of the Captivity of Thomas Phelps
Week 10
Seminar Presentations
Weeks 11-12 Reading and Writing Weeks
LD – Lesel Dawson; EH – Edward Holberton; LP –Laurence Publicover; MW – Professor
Martin White
General Reading and References
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. B: The Sixteenth Century and the Early
Seventeenth Century, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (New York and London: W.W. Norton,
2012)
The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse, 1509-1659, intr. David Norbrook, ed. H.R.
Woudhuysen (London: Penguin, 1992)
Michael Hattaway, Renaissance and Reformations: An Introduction to Early Modern English
Literature (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005)
Malcolm Hebron, Key Concepts in Renaissance Literature (London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2008)
The Renaissance Literature Handbook, ed. Susan Bruce and Rebecca Steinberger (London:
Continuum, 2010)
Renaissance Literature and Culture, ed. Lisa Hopkins and Matthew Steggle (London:
Continuum, 2006)