LIT 372 Topics in Early Modern Literature

3 hours 

Topics in Early Modern Literature may focus on a literary genre or convention (e.g., drama, sonnet) or an important theme (e.g., the Other in literature, hierarchy, literature of love, monarchy in crisis) as a means of understanding the literature of the period. The specific focus of the course will be determined by the individual professor and may be concerned exclusively with English literature, Western Literature more broadly, or Western and non-Western literature. The course will approach the canon for this period not as a fixed entity but as a body of work consistently open to reevaluation and critique; alternative texts, voices, and subject positions relevant to the topic(s) will be included. Topics in Early Modern Literature will examine major and minor literary movements, authors, or ideas at work in 16th- and 17th-century literature with an eye to the formal features of texts as well as the social, historical, and political contexts in which they appear.