Renaissance Studies Courses

REN240Y1Y
The Civilization of Renaissance Europe
Professor Ken Bartlett
T 11-1

An interdisciplinary introduction to the civilization of the Renaissance illustrated by a study of the institutions, thought, politics, society and culture of both Italy and Northern Europe. Italian city states such as Florence, Urbino and Venice, Papal Rome and despotic Milan are compared with the northern dynastic monarchies of France and England.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities course
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1) + Society and its Institutions (3)

REN241H1F
Renaissance Masterworks and Remixes
Professor Paul Stevens
T 1-2, R 1-2

Everyone, from Vladimir Putin to Greta Thunberg, wants to talk about the West, but it’s not clear that many people really understand what the West means. The West is the culture that we, you and I, live in. It has a very specific identity, and its norms shape the everyday way we think and act. If you want to understand the West, if you want to get a handle on its cultural DNA, you need to access its discursive codes. Those codes are contained in two sets of texts called Scripture and the Classics, and if you want to understand the long and complex reach of these texts, especially at the point where the West goes global and begins to turn into what we now call modernity, you need to read Milton’s Paradise Lost. Now, whether you think such a study is a journey to the heart of darkness or to the gates of paradise, it doesn’t really matter, because Milton, like his Archangel Raphael, will show you things you thought “Unimaginable.” And it is in that “unimaginableness,” that inventiveness or creativity, that you’ll catch glimpses of what the future might be.

In other words, Paradise Lost is the single most influential poem in the English language, the language which now serves as the world’s principal means of global communication. On the one hand, the poem is redolent with memories of the Classics and their inspired Renaissance imitations from Dante to Shakespeare, and, on the other, its influence is pervasive in modern Anglophone world literature from Jane Austen and Mary Shelley to Cormac McCarthy and Malcolm X. It offers insight into so many of our current pre-occupations, including nationalism, colonialism, gender fluidity, secular humanism, and the intractable banality of evil.

The course has three principal aims. (1) Its general aim is to introduce students to the literary culture of the West through the fictions of John Milton by means of a concise intertextual study of Paradise Lost and Scripture. (2) Its specific aim is to provide students with a coherent understanding of both Scripture and Milton’s epic attempt to re-imagine and re-write it, that is, to write back to and re-invent divine revelation. (3) Its third or formal aim is to help students develop their skills in close reading and constructing both written and oral arguments.

TEXTS:

John Milton: The Major Works. Ed. Orgel & Goldberg. (Oxford UP)
The New Oxford Annotated Bible (Oxford UP); and / or any copy of the King James (AV) Bible of 1611
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (Oxford UP)

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities course
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

REN242H1S
Scientific Worldviews of the Renaissance
Professor Hakob Barseghyan
F 11-1

An in-depth study of late medieval and early modern scientific worldviews, with a focus on interconnections between natural philosophy, cosmology, theology, astronomy, optics, medicine, natural history, and ethics. Through a consideration of early modern ideas including free will and determinism, the finite and infinite universe, teleology and mechanism, theism and deism, and deduction and intuition, this course investigates some of the period’s key metaphysical and methodological assumptions, and reveals how an evolving scientific understanding informed the Renaissance worldview.

Exclusion: HPS309H1
Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities course
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2) + Society and its Institutions (3)

REN342H1F
Woman and Writing in the Renaissance
Professor Manuela Scarci
W 10-12

In this course, we will look broadly at women’s writing, women writers, and women as writers during the early modern period (approximately 1350–1650 ce). Beginning with a historical contextualization of the long relationship between women and writing during the Renaissance, we will move to exploring this relationship through four principal themes: 1) family and relationships; 2) politics and religion; 3) humanism and science, and 4) gender, sexuality, and the body.

We will examine each of these themes as they appear across multiple texts by multiple authors, in different genres, and across multiple historical, cultural, and linguistic contexts to develop our understanding of how, what, and why women wrote.

Exclusion: VIC342H1
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

REN343H1S
Sex and Gender
Professor Andrea Walkden
W 1-3

An interdisciplinary approach to the workings and representation of gender and sexuality in early modern Europe. Our range of topics will include heterosexual marriage, same-sex friendship, homoerotic desire, courtly love, sexual violence, cross-gender identification and performance, hermaphroditism and the contested or “monstrous” body. To explore these topics, we will be reading literary works by Boccaccio, Christine de Pizan, Castiglione, Marguerite de Navarre, Montaigne, Marlowe, Lyly, Elizabeth Cary, and Margaret Cavendish, although our archive will also include illustrated anatomy books, conduct books, popular pamphlet literature, works of art, map illustrations, travel narratives, and ethnographic writing. Throughout the term, we will be considering Renaissance understandings of sex and gender in relation to the conceptual frameworks offered by scholars of feminism, queerness, disability, and the history of sexuality.

Exclusion: VIC343H1, VIC343Y1
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

REN349H1S
Special Topics in the Global Renaissance
Professor Laura Ingallinella
W 10-12

The Renaissance is considered by scholars as the time in which the world truly became global. In this course, we will examine how the production of stories, knowledge, and ideas was affected by early globalization. In particular, we will explore cross-cultural encounters and exchanges established between early modern Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe along networks of trade, imperialistic expansion, and oppression. This exploration will be conducted along four thematic trajectories: 1) worldmaking and ethnography; 2) the languages of humanism and lyricism; 3) religion, proselytism, and transculturation; 4) romance and empire. We will pay particular attention to how early globalization was shaped by power structures and by the intersection of race, class, religion, and gender. Our journey will take us to different locations across the early modern world—from Rome to Agra, from London to Maluku, from Instanbul to Florence. We will discuss poetry, theatrical pieces, travel writings, philosophical tracts, and devotional tales alongside maps, atlases, paintings, and objects from around the world.

REN392
Renaissance Studies Independent Study

REN440H1F
Florence and the Renaissance
Professor Ken Bartlett
T 2-4

This course is an interdisciplinary seminar on Florence in the 15th century. Using mostly primary sources, we will investigate the humanist republic, emphasizing topics such as humanism, culture and society, the rise of the Medici, Florentine Neoplatonism and the influence of Savonarola. The focus will be on the dynamic relationship between humanism and the ideal of republican liberty as defined by Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini and others. The position of women in Florentine society and the role of artistic patronage will also be addressed.

Prerequisite: VIC240Y1 or permission of the instructor
Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities course
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1) + Society and its Institutions (3)

REN492
Renaissance Studies Independent Study