#  English 90rw. Renaissance Worlds and Selves 

 



 Instructor: [Leah Whittington](/people/leah-whittington)  
Tuesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD  
*Enrollment: Limited to 15 students.*

 We are generally familiar with the ways in which contemporary culture conceives of categories of identity. But how did people in other times and places imagine themselves and their relationships to the many communities and worlds to which they belonged? This course investigates the forms and varieties of identity-making in the European Renaissance (1350-1700), a vibrant period of profound social, political, and technological change, when traditional ways of conceiving selfhood competed with new paradigms of knowledge emerging from the Protestant Reformation, the revival of Greco-Roman politics and ethics, the rise of scientific empiricism, and colonial encounters with non-European cultures. How does literature act as a vehicle of self-expression and self-representation, sometimes enacting identity-scripts and sometimes providing the space to explore alternative and hypothetical selves? You will read works of literature from a variety of genres (life-writing, romance-fantasy, comedy, lyric poetry, political allegory), exploring how Renaissance people represented their lives and wrestled with constructions of identity in stories about falling in love, cross-dressing, flying on hippogriffs, building utopian cities, and playing games with words.  
  
This course satisfies the “Pre-1700 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.