History 74000 / RSCP 72100/ Comp Lit 71000: Introduction to Renaissance Studies: History and Literature in Early Modern England and Ireland

Instructors: Clare Carroll (Professor, Comparative Literature), Sarah Covington (Professor, History) Monday, 4:15-6:15 PM

This course will explore the history of England and Ireland in the early modern period, focusing particularly on violence and colonialism as they were manifested in a variety of different voices and writings. Working from political, legal, and religious primary source texts as well as the writings of Edmund Spenser and John Milton, we will also examine the rich and overlapping secondary historical and literary literature that has emerged in the last twenty years regarding the fraught relations between Ireland and England during a transformative time in both countries’ history, from the age of Henry VIII through to the invasion and brutal conquest of Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s.