The Romance of Travel

Considers the role of the strange, new, and fantastic in travel accounts of the Medieval period and Renaissance. If travel writers offered their stories as "windows to the world," we will treat them as representations that expose, reinforce, and subvert the author's cultural, political, and social attitudes. Works by Marco Polo, Chaucer, Columbus, Ralegh, Shakespeare, Defoe, and Swift. Enrollment limited to 30.