Thinking with Romance in the Renaissance

Modernity defines romance as escapist, a mode that flies from the "real." Yet Renaissance writers placed it at the center of debates about politics, ethics, and knowledge. Tracking its generic fingerprint in Spenser's romance-epic, we will consider its adaptation for the stage as tragicomedy and its relation to epistemological shifts dividing science from fiction, knowledge from pleasure. Authors include Ralegh, Spenser, Shakespeare, Fletcher, Massinger, Bacon, Cavendish. Open to graduate students only.