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ENGL239: English Literature and the Continental Renaissance

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2014
https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/1378

A study of English writers of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in relation to the international cultural movement of the European Renaissance, with an emphasis on changing attitudes towards the Renaissance project of reviving the classical past.  The first half of the semester follows the impact of Renaissance humanism on poetry, history, philology, semiotics, exegesis, and autobiography; the second half considers individual case studies of the ways in which English Renaissance writers assimilate and transform humanism’s aims, aspirations, and failures. 

ENGL111: Epic from Homer to Star Wars

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2014
http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/12235

An introduction to epic poetry and to several of the most significant works in the genre: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Vergil's Aeneid, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Wordsworth's The Prelude. The course examines epic poems in relation to their own historical contexts as well as the interplay between texts in the epic tradition, the shift from epic to novel, and the manifestations of epic narrative in the modern world especially in film.

ENGL90em: Renaissance Metamorphoses

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2013
http://courses.fas.harvard.edu/11444

This course traces the reception of Ovid’s Metamorphoses through the diverse responses of Petrarch, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton and Dryden, exploring how Renaissance writers fashioned their own poetry in response to the generative power of Ovid’s work.

ENGL126: Shakespeare's Rome

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2013
http://courses.fas.harvard.edu/57556

This course investigates Shakespeare’s lifelong engagement with the literature, politics, and culture of ancient Rome. It will give careful attention to the three "Roman Plays" - Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus - but will also consider the larger role of classical antiquity in Shakespeare’s development and achievement as a dramatist.

ENGL90el: English Literature in the Sixteenth Century

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2012
http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/14149

This course will study the literature of the English Renaissance in relationship to the cultural and intellectual movements of 16th century Europe. It aims to offer a survey of the major authors (Wyatt, Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare), texts, and genres of this dynamic period. We will focus on the literary, intellectual, religious, and cultural contexts which English Renaissance authors aspired imitate and transform, including Petrarchan love lyric,...

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