Studies in Renaissance Literature (338-0-20)
Topic
Brave New Worlds, 1500-1700
Instructors
William N West
Meeting Info
Parkes Hall 224: Tues, Thurs 9:30AM - 10:50AM
Overview of class
More than once between 1500 and 1700, people in early modern England learned of a new world—the Americas after the voyages of Columbus in 1492 and of Ralegh in 1585, the moons of Earth and of Jupiter observed through the telescopes of Harriot and Galileo by telescope in 1609, the intimate worlds of microscopy explored by Hooke in 1665. As their worlds widened, deepened, and multiplied, English writers and thinkers invented new worlds of their own: fairy realms, enchanted islands, kingdoms of darkness, lunar landscapes, perfect polities and nightmare ones, imagined worlds that could critique of their own or propose and explore things that seemed impossible in it. Despite being avowed as fictions, usually, these speculative worlds claimed value, seriousness, and even kinds of truth through the extravagance of their fantasies, while also asserting their pleasurableness and recreativity. In this class we will explore some of these worlds of imagination and how and why early modern writers crafted them, including Thomas More's Utopia, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, and Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World, as well as related works on exploration and science by Columbus, Cortes, Galileo, and others.
Class Attributes
Advanced Expression
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area