Graduate Studies
MPhil in European Literature & Culture | Course content | Modules | I-D Renaissance - Europe and the Renaissance
MPhil in European Literature & Culture
Interdisciplinary | I-D Renaissance
Europe and the Renaissance
(Convenor: Dr Rodrigo Cacho)
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The Renaissance is one of the most crucial periods in European cultural history. The humanistic movement, which began in Italy during the 15th century, was based on a deep rediscovery of the classical heritage; and through this rediscovery a modern vision of the world was born. This led to a new understanding of language, literature, music, art, politics, religion, philosophy, medicine, law, or social manners. These ideas were soon to spread across Europe, defining the Renaissance as a moment of intense cultural exchange. There was a common project of reform among scholars of different nations. Travelling, dialogue and epistolary exchange are at the heart of the humanist mind. However, the Renaissance is also a paradoxical period; one of economic crisis, war and violence. National and religious identities were confronted and challenged, leading for example to the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. The Mediterranean provided a network that favoured communication among different people, but it was also a battlefield. Furthermore, the sea was an opening that led to the New World 'discovered' by Columbus; stimulating the rethinking of human nature while at the same time producing colonialism in the Americas through more violence.
This module aims to analyse some of the most relevant aspects of this rich and controversial historical period. The Renaissance will be studied through an interdisciplinary approach, touching upon its main ideological and cultural points. This will offer students an ample opportunity to engage with one of the defining periods in modern history, while developing their academic interests which may lead to doctoral research.
Sessions will be held by colleagues from different Departments, therefore the language used will be English. However, it is strongly recommended that students have knowledge of at least one European language.
List of collaborators:
Prof W. Bennett, Dr A. Brundin, Dr R. Cacho, Prof P. Ford, Dr E. Gilby, Dr N. Hammond, Dr H. Sanson, Ms E. Strietman, Dr A. Taylor, Dr J. Whaley, Dr C. Woodford.
Each session will be devoted to general topics such as,
- Learning, Imitation and Self-Representation in the European Renaissance
- The Vernacular and its Codification in the Early Modern Period
- The Spread of Religious Reform
- Allegory: Renaissance and Baroque
- Women and Education in 16th- and 17th-century
- Writing for the Convent in Early Modern Europe
- Europe and the New World
Preliminary reading
J. H. Elliott, The Old World and the New (1492-1650) (Cambridge: CUP, 1970)
E. H. Gombrich, Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance (London: Phaidon, 1972)
Thomas Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven: Yale UP, 1982)
P. O. Kristeller, Renaissance Concepts of Man, and Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1972)
Eva D. Marcu, Sixteenth-century Nationalism (New Yoork, Abaris, 1975)
Martin McLaughlin, Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)
G. A. Padley, Grammatical Theory in Western Europe 1500-1700, Trends in Vernacular Grammar II (Cambridge : CUP, 1988)
Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London: Harper & Row, 1972)
Orest Ranum (ed.), National Consciousness, History, and Culture in Early Modern Europe (Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins UP, 1975).
B. Richardson, ‘Questions of language’, in The Cambridge Companion in Modern Italian Culture, eds Z. Baranski and R. West (Cambridge, CUP: 2001), 63-79.
Please direct enquiries to Dr Rodrigo Cacho
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