AS 060.382 - Renaissance Literature and the Sense of Time

Institution:

Johns Hopkins University

Subject:

Description:

One could do worse than to define the literary Renaissance by a newfound complexity, variety, and urgency in its attitudes to time. The Renaissance, it’s been argued, saw in its own preoccupation with temporal experience the mark of its difference from other times; and it’s of some importance (for both the history of literature and of time) that this event was far more decisive in literature than in formal philosophy. In this course, we will read some classic texts in Renaissance epic, lyric, drama, and prose that place specifically temporal problems and categories-eternity, immortality, memory, growth, the event, historical loss, prediction, duration, aging-at their center. Our investigations will center on three salient features of the Renaissance imagination of time: the “discovery” of a temporality of persistence and loss specific to the cultural past, often prompting a reworking of classical texts as if they were themselves “about” time; the alignment of literary creation and biological procreation as means of “defeating” (or inhabiting) time; and the tensions and negotiations between traditional eschatology-life and history lived in relation to a final end- and the notion of time as infinite, successive extension. Throughout the course, special emphasis will be placed on how the texts modify and extend philosophical questions by relating them to the temporal aspects of literary form, such as the regularity of meter or the unity of action. Pre 1800 course.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.jhu.edu

Phone Number:

(410) 516-8000

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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