ENGL 361:  Renaissance Topographies

Course Description

The European Renaissance was a period of extraordinary literary and artistic achievement in which people developed new ways of understanding their place in the world and in the universe, both literally and figuratively. In this course students will read a number of Renaissance works that explore the individual’s relationship to the city, the country, the New World, and worlds beyond our own. We will also explore the ways in which the Renaissance placed humanity at the center of the known universe, and viewed humanity as the tool through which the historical, cultural, social, and political topographies of the Renaissance world could be understood.  This course will also spend a considerable amount of time attending to the ways in which the literary and philosophical works of the period intersect with important works of graphic art, sculpture, and architecture by figures such as Brunelleschi, Leonardo, and Michelangelo.