Seminar: The Renaissance

3 units

The Restoration of Stuart kingship in 1660 opened an era of remarkable cultural production and public scandal. Women took to the stage as the theater was restored; intrigues, political and amorous, became the very subject of both high culture and low gossip; the memory of civil war haunted the age, and riot and revolution repeatedly threatened the precarious life of the state. Public affairs-both civic and sexual-transfixed this age, and indeed shaped its most important cultural forms and modes: ballads and newspapers, satires and lampoons, heroic dramas and witty comedies, diaries and letters, translations, satires and epic poems. Amid the dangers and miscellany of public life, writers fashioned new modes of literature and negotiated new strategies of livelihood. We will look closely at a number of aspects of this culture, the commerce of personal and textual transactions, its great and scandalous careers, its important genres, its scintillating verse, prose, and plays. Our reading will range widely, compassing the most distinguished authors of the age-Aphra Behn, William Congreve, John Dryden, John Evelyn, Anne Killigrew, Andrew Marvell, John Milton, Samuel Pepys, Katherine Philips, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester-as well as news-sheets, pamphlets, and other print ephemera.