The Discourse of Discovery in English Renaissance Writing

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The sixteenth century was a period of dramatic technological change. New discoveries in geography, astronomy, and science radically altered our understanding of the universe and the individual. New technologies transformed the way in which people made sense of the world and of each other. This course will look at the major territorial and technological discoveries of the sixteenth century, and will examine, through the work of writers such as Donne, Marvell, Raleigh, Shakespeare and Hariot, the ways in which the discourse of discovery shaped the literature of the English Renaissance.