WORDPLAY IN THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE

Writers of the English Renaissance are renowned for their virtuosic use of language. Critics and readers often describe the particular brilliance of Early Modern English texts, their elaborate puns and metaphors, crystalline images, striking diction, formal inventiveness, and hidden layers of meaning. This course explores wordplay, in its many senses, in the English Renaissance, and helps students to build a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of writing. Focusing largely on 17th-century texts, students explore the literary contexts for some of the greatest poetry and prose written in English, from Donne to Milton. Building upon the first-year Introduction to Renaissance Literature, these lectures and seminars approach the literature of Early Modern England from the point of view of its language, focusing on the most fundamental level: that of the word itself.