ENGL3681: Renaissance Sensations: Literature, Science, and the Supernatural

• Successful completion of either ENGL2011 Theory and Practice of Literary Criticism or ENGL2021 Shakespeare.

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• To investigate the relationships between science and the supernatural in the literature of Renaissance England, with a particular emphasis on the history of the physical senses.
• To explore the ways in which Renaissance authors and natural philosophers wrote and thought about their physical senses, across a range of genres including poetry, fictional prose, the essay, and the sermon.
• To investigate the role and conceptualization of sense experience in relation to the development of new scientific methods of producing and communicating knowledge; to explore the relation of those methods to older discourses of magic and medicine.
• To interrogate and contest the boundary between literary and scientific writing in this period; to understand the formative influence of religion on the development of scientific methodologies.
• To consider the textual, visual, and material cultures of early science, including anatomical illustrations, and medical and scientific instruments (notably, the microscope).
• To introduce students to historiographical, critical, and theoretical debates about embodiment; to historicize and denaturalize the body as an object of study.

• Embraces a chronologically and generically broad range of literature from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including major authors such as Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Donne, as well as lesser-known figures including Thomas Traherne and Margaret Cavendish.
• Addresses early scientific and medical writing, including works by Galileo, Francis Bacon, and Robert Boyle.
• Focuses on aspects of sense experience, including empiricism (the senses as a source of scientific knowledge); sensory illusions (magic and the theatre); sensual pleasure (the science and anatomy of desire).
• Explores the relations between science and medicine and other, older forms of knowledge, including magical and occult knowledge (for instance, the development of chemistry from medieval alchemy), and domestic expertise (for example, points of contact between cookery, herb lore, and medicine).
• Combines close-readings of specific texts with attention to relevant historical and intellectual contexts, including classical philosophies (scepticism; neo-Platonism) and reformation theology.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Students will gain detailed knowledge and understanding of literary, scientific, and medical cultures of the Renaissance, and the relations between these cultures.
• Students will be able to demonstrate familiarity with relevant historical and intellectual contexts for understanding Renaissance ideas about the senses and embodiment.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Students studying this module will develop:
• critical skills in the close reading and analysis of a range of texts
• understanding of a variety of critical and theoretical approaches
• familiarity with formal and aesthetic features of literature; the capacity to persuasively analyse their workings in specific texts
• a sensitive awareness of generic and rhetorical conventions, and the formative influence these exert on both individual readers and historical circumstances
• an ability to articulate and corroborate an imaginative response to literature
• an ability to articulate understanding of key literary concepts and theories
• command of a wide range of vocabulary and an appropriate critical terminology
• appreciation of literature as a means by which values and concepts are contested, affirmed and debated

Key Skills:

• an ability to analyse and compare complex texts critically and persuasively
• an ability to access and assess complex information of diverse kinds in a structured and systematic way, via a range of traditional and digital media
• effective communication and argument
• competence in the planning and execution of essays
• familiarity with and use of conventions of scholarly presentation, and bibliographic skills including consistent, accurate citation of sources
• a capacity for independent reasoning, and an ability to assess critically the arguments of others
• information-technology skills such as word-processing, electronic data accessing, and data management
• personal organization and time-management skills

• Independent but directed reading: in preparation for seminars, students are assigned some set primary texts, plus some required and some voluntary secondary reading, along with questions for consideration; this enhances subject-specific knowledge and encourages critical reflection.
• Seminars: facilitate peer-to-peer discussion and debate; provide opportunities to practice and refine close-reading skills; help to cultivate a cogent communication style; develop independent reasoning and critical engagement with the ideas of others; promote awareness of a range of interpretive, methodological, and theoretical approaches.
• Essay consultation session: encourages students to critically reflect on, revise and refine their own work.
• Directed learning / research: this may include assigning students a topic or question to be explored independently or collectively, using materials and tools provided by the tutor; alternatively, students may be asked to devise their own topic or question for further investigation. To this end, students will be introduced to key digital resources such as the OED and EEBO, contributing to the development of digital and research literacy, and to information acquisition and management. Directed research may function as preparatory work for coursework essays, or for informal seminar presentations to peers and tutor.
• Coursework essays: allow students to demonstrate their ability to engage in persuasive and informed argumentation, supported by detailed subject-specific knowledge, close-reading and analytical skills, and imaginative interpretation of texts. They also test the ability to adhere to scholarly conventions of presentation and bibliographic skills.
• Written feedback provided after the first assessed essay allows students to reflect on examiners' comments, giving them the opportunity to improve their work for the second essay.

Before the first assessed essay, students have an individual 15 minute consultation session in which they are entitled to show their seminar leader a sheet of points, relevant to the essay, and to receive oral comment on these points. Students may also, if they wish, discuss their ideas for the second essay at this meeting.

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