This is a repeating event30 June 2022 5:30 pm
Exploring the English Renaissance through texts and objects (1516-1616)
Event Details
“It is the strange potency of things that, once we have made them, they can change us.”
Neil MacGregor, Shakespeare’s Restless World
Rhinoceros by Albrecht Dürer
What do a rhinoceros, an astrolabe and a distorted skull have in common? And how do they interact with sonnets, political treatises and travel narratives? Through this odd collection of objects and texts the English Renaissance speaks to us – taking us into a world of absurd violence and striking creativity.
In this study we will journey to the time between the publication of Utopia (1516) and Shakespeare’s death (1616) to explore one of the richest and most productive periods in English literature. Each week we will engage with a set text and a surprise object to establish a three-way conversation: between words and images, between then and now, between us and the Renaissance self.
STUDY DETAILS:
- Six-week study facilitated by Vivien Kogut
- Thursdays, 5:30-7:30 pm BST
- 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 June and 7 July 2022
- £180, including opening notes and resources
| 1: John Donne’s poetry: change and invention “And now good morrow to our waking souls” John Donne’s changing identity is typical of the Renaissance: from growing up as a Catholic to dying as Dean of St Pauls, from a rowdy youth to becoming the king’s trusted chaplain, from writing fine erotic poetry to producing unique religious meditations. His writing surprises and delights us with its exploration of change. As we read two of his poerms we will discuss how poetic language can transport and transcend, while also reconnecting us with the deepest emotions. |
| 2: Thomas Wyatt and Petrarch: bringing Europe to Henry VIII’s court “I burn and freeze like ice.” Thomas Wyatt was Petrarch’s first translator into English. He is credited with having created the English sonnet, a form Shakespeare would later develop and perfect. We will read two of Wyatt’s sonnets: “Whoso List to Hunt” and “I Find no Peace” and explore how language can elude, allude and collude at a dangerous time. |
| 3: Edmund Spenser’s The Fairie Queene: fantasy and horror in Elizabethan England “The general end therefore of all the book is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline.” The Fairie Queene (1590) is Edmund Spenser’s unfinished epic, written to celebrate the grandeur of Queen Elizabeth I’s court. But we are thrown in a world where reverse is always present and “nothing is but what is not”. Perhaps this might explain how a ruthless colonial administrator was also one of the greatest poets of Elizabethan times. As we visit the ‘House of Temperance’ in Canto IX, Book II, we will explore the poem’s fascinating and terrifying world. |
| 4: The Earl of Cumberland’s voyage to Brazil: crossing the oceans, dreaming of empire “…and so we entered the ships with a great shout, and found few to resist us.” (“The voyage set out by the right honourable the Earle of Cumberland, in the year 1586”) Sea monsters, naval battles, Indian arrows and much plundering – in John Sarracol’s account we are taken across the Atlantic and back on a voyage of pillaging and nationalist fervour. As we read this startling narrative we will discuss how words and objects can place us at the heart of the action, and how imperial ambitions are not a thing of the past. |
| 5: Thomas More’s Utopia: between seeming and being “And though no man have anything, yet every man is rich.” Thomas More’s astonishing 1516 book, Utopia, is a mixture of political treatise, moral discourse, prose fiction, autobiography and travel story. If anything, More invented a word that has since become part of our vocabulary, for better or for worse. We will read selections from Book 1 and discuss how its haunting reverberations are still with us today. |
| 6: Shakespeare’s sonnets: the Renaissance and us “…in black ink my love may still shine bright.” As Donne once wrote “Thy firmness makes my circle just,/And makes me end where I begun.” Our journey through the English Renaissance ends at its pulsating heart, with William Shakespeare’s unique grasp of his own time. We will discuss how two of his sonnets encapsulate, challenge and reinvent all the big questions of both then and now. |
