Course Description
In this course we will examine literary representations of love and sexual desire. Our aim will be to ponder the various, even contradictory ways in which Renaissance texts imagine love and sex as structuring, and structured by, society and culture. We will consider, for instance, how and to what effect social institutions such as friendship and marriage organize and normalize sexual and affective relationships and behaviors. We will resist the temptation to accept these institutions and the assumptions they make about gender, class, race, and creed (to name but four axes of difference) as natural or normal, and instead survey a range of discursive formations that challenge their hegemonic status. Along the way, we will locate and trace hitherto ineffable articulations of love and desire forged in opposition to dominant ideological institutions. Sampling a range of canonical works by John Milton, John Donne, Edmund Spenser, Aphra Behn, and Margaret Cavendish as well as lesser-known works by authors such as Katherine Philips, Richard Barnfield, John Lyly, and Mary Wroth, we will devote we will devote sustained attention to interrogating a cultural discourse that legitimates certain acts and arrangements while criminalizing and pathologizing others. Requirements will include a presentation, midterm paper, and final paper.
Course Information
- Course- ENG 5835: Renaissance Literature- Sex, Love, and Society
- Professor- Dr. David L. Orvis
- Offered- M 6-9 pm
- Semester- Fall 2024
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