ENGL3300 CRN 13163Topics in: Renaissance Literat

This rabble-rousing literary history will explore early modern representations of protest, disobedience, and insurrection. By alternating between Shakespeare's plays and other politically troublesome texts, this course will track the explosive political events in early modern England that eventually led to the beheading of King Charles I. We’ll learn the basics of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century political theory in order to see how some thinkers—including Shakespeare—challenged authority, even at the risk of their own lives. We will see that, although the terms of political resistance have changed, early modern thinkers were dealing with many of the same debates that we are today, including the nature of political representation, the limits of legitimate resistance, the role of religion in governance, and the memorialization of a controversial past.