Renaissance Humanism

         

This course attempts to trace the central philosophical and conceptual issues in the study of renaissance thought. Emphasis is on reconstructing the main ideas of the period and examining the literature of that age in relation to these ideas. As the first in a four-part paper, this is an attempt to acquaint students with the cultural and intellectual ideas that have shaped the modern western culture. Alongside the literary appreciation of texts, it is expected that students will also learn to appreciate the political and social contexts which the shape the ideas represented in these texts. Selections include literary and non-literary texts from the period and critical and scholarly works from recent times which attempt to throw new light on the period. A selection of texts for self study has been suggested which will help students gain more in depth knowledge about the issue treated in the in the course.

• Unit I: Introduction to themes and Issues
• Quentin Skinner, The Ideal of Liberty in The Foundations of Modern Political Thought
• Stephen Greenblatt, Introduction to Renaissance Self Fashioning
• Unit II: Key Ideas
• Umberto Eco, On Beauty Chapter 3 – Beauty as Proportion and Harmony
• Sir Thomas More, Utopia, Book II: Of the Religions of Utopians, Of their magistrates
• Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis
• Unit III: Texts
• John Milton, Paradise Lost-Book IX
• Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto 11.
• Christopher Marlowe, Dr Faustus
• William Shakespeare, The Tempest
• Unit IV: Revisiting the Renaissance
• Stanley Fish, Surprised by Sin, chap. 1
• Eric Auerbach, Dante: Poet of the Secular World
• Anthony Grafton, The New Science and the Traditions of Humanism
• Texts for Self Study
• Dekker, Rowley and Ford, The Witch of Edmonton
• Thomas Harriot, Report of the New Found Land of Virginia
• Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly and Other Writings
• Select writings of Petrarch
• Machiavelli, Selected Political Writings, 24, 25, 26
• Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy
• R W Southern, Scholastic Humanism in 'Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe'
• The Complete Essays of Montaigne