Fall 2007 Courses

English 394-02: Renaissance Magic, Science, & the Natural World (Krier)

T/TH 2:45-4:15pm, CARN 305

In this course we'll consider magic and science as approaches to Nature through stories, plays, poems, and prose by natural philosophers of the Renaissance, in order to discover how people of Shakespeare's time understood their place in the cosmos. We'll read Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Tempest, excerpts from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene and John Milton's Paradise Lost, at least one contemporary account of voyage, exploration and discovery. We'll read passages on occult-magical, medical, and scientific practice from practitioners of demonic magic, natural magic, medical men, and experimentors. We'll trace the legend of the ancient Egyptian magus Hermes Trismegistus, and meet the mythological sorceresses Circe and Medea. If time permits, we'll add passages and sketches from the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Throughout, we'll get perspective on each of our themes by reading from the boisterous, ribald, irreverent Gargantua and Pantagruel of François Rabelais. We'll also have our own (electronic) storyteller: John Crowley has recorded his lyrical novel Ægypt, and we'll refresh ourselves by having him read to us. We'll find endlessly inventive ways that Renaissance writers thought about relationships among power, gender, knowledge, desire, and sensory experience. How did they experience natural environment? What did it mean to them to be a student of Nature? What did it mean to be a master of Nature?

There will be two essays, a mid-term test, and a final.

This course fulfills the English-major requirement for a pre-1700 course. There are no prerequisites for this course. Majors from all fields are welcome.

Fall 2007 Course Listings