ENGL 344 - Age of Elizabeth


This course explores Elizabethan literature in its literary and cultural context.  We will examine the ways in which writers deployed poetry, prose, and drama in the service of political ambition, literary aspiration, and religious sentiment, as well as erotic desire.  Our broad goal is to use these literary expressions to discuss the ways that subjectivity in the Renaissance rested uneasily on distinctions between self-assertion and narcissism, soul and body, health and disease.  We will also be paying particular attention to  ways in which poetic expression contributes to the gendering of subjectivity.