Renaissance Literature
Fall 2008
The Renaissance has justly become both famous and notorious as an age of discovery, and its voyages took place in many realms. This semester, we will read several history making narratives of early modern travel: first-hand accounts of discovery, captivity, conquest, or cultural encounter. As Europeans came to acquire experience of unfamiliar places, literary texts of the period began to assimilate this experience by describing imagined voyages across real or fantastic landscapes. Finally, voyages of exploration served Renaissance writers as a metaphor: for intellectual inquiry, for spiritual development, or for the pursuit of love. Among the literary genres sampled this semester will be sonnets, plays, prose narratives, utopias, and chivalric romance. Authors and travellers will include Francis Petrarch, Amerigo Vespucci, Thomas More, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Hernán Cortés, John Donne, Francis Drake, Mary Rowlandson, Francis Bacon.
Readings
- Sahagun, Bernardino De. The War of Conquest: How It Was Waged Here in Mexico: The Aztecs’ Own Story . Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1979. ISBN: 9780874801118.
- Cortes, Hernan. Letters from Mexico . Translated by Anthony Pagden. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780300090949.
- Sahagun, Bernardino De. “ The War of Conquest: How It Was Waged Here in Mexico: The Aztecs’ Own Story .”
- Cortes, Hernan. “ Letters from Mexico .”
- Sahagun, Bernardino De. “ The War of Conquest: How It Was Waged Here in Mexico: The Aztecs’ Own Story .” (cont.)
- Cortes, Hernan. “ Letters from Mexico .” (cont.)
- 21 · Donne, John. Poems and Prose of John Donne . Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 2001.
- 22 · ———. Poems and Prose of John Donne . Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 2001.
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗Historical OpenCourseWare
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.