The Renaissance remains one of the most defining moments in world history – a period during which the very essence of modernity came into being as a result of the seismic shifts that occurred in social, political, cultural and religious trends across Europe and the Middle East. Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, driven by unprecedented levels of intellectual curiosity and scientific experimentation, many of the world’s finest artistic masterpieces were produced in the fields of literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, and music. Furthermore, advances in medicine, physics, astronomy, philosophy, education, manufacturing, trade, and travel revolutionised not just the way individuals, nation states, and civilisations evolved and interacted with each other but the way in which humanity began to understand its place in the universe. The period, however, also had a darker side, many of the effects of which continue to reverberate around the world and live on in our complex inheritance of deeply ingrained ideologies, biases, traditions and conventions. For all of its artistic, scientific, and cultural achievements, the Renaissance is characterised by military conflict, conquest and colonisation, slavery, religious intolerance and bigotry, inequality between the sexes, an uneven distribution of wealth and resources, and social hierarchies structured on birthright and hereditary succession rather than merit and diligence. 

All of the joys, tensions, anxieties, fears, hopes, aspirations, and prejudices experienced by individuals and groups in the Renaissance are reflected in the exciting, innovative, and visionary English literature of the period that will form the focus of this course. Moreover, no human emotion, feeling, or action will prove to be beyond the scope of Renaissance writers’ preoccupations – from guilt, jealousy, and despair to violence, lust, and a thirst for power – thus making the meditating on such material, and the thinking about its key topics, a rich learning experience for us today. Crucially, by reading the great works of the Renaissance, from Shakespeare to Milton and beyond, it becomes possible to access a deeper understanding of the human condition and what it means to be human. In an era of fear, division, and exclusion, the literature of the past can actually teach readers in the present how to understand and embrace difference, and to show compassion and empathy towards others. In this course, then, we will see just how salient Renaissance literature is to our understanding of how the individual belongs to the world and how a just society should be ordered.