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Home 2016-2017 Undergraduate College Catalog Course Offerings English Literature Courses ENG 2098: Renaissance Poetry (3 cr.)

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ENG 2098: Renaissance Poetry (3 cr.)

This course is designed to introduce students to

the specialized study of Renaissance poetry,

focusing specifically on how the Renaissance used

poetry to think through questions about free

will. Calvinism and the English Church adopted

the principle of predestination, the idea that

God chose who was saved and who was damned when

he created the universe. This idea led to intense

cultural anxiety over the existence of free will

and the value of self-reliance and

self-cultivation. This course will examine how

the Renaissance used the literary language that

it inherited from Rome, a culture that valued

self-reliance, to think through questions about

the relationship of the self to God. In addition

to reading Renaissance poetry, students will

become familiar with Protestant philosophy. We

will read the work of Martin Luther, Erasmus,

Edmund Spenser, John Donne, and John Milton. The

course culminates with a sustained study of

Milton's Paradise Lost. Students will learn how

to analyze rhetorical and poetic devices, how to

use the religious and philosophical cultural

context to historically situate poetry, and how

to write an effective analytical paper about

poetry, in general, and early modern poetry, in

particular.

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