ENGL 6265 - Renaissance Non-Humanism: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral

Spring. 4 credits. Student option grading.

J. Mann.

How is the “non-human turn” re-shaping early modern studies? Since Burkhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, humans have occupied the center of the field of Renaissance studies. But recent critical movements have decentered the human in favor of the nonhuman, variously understood as animals, geophysical systems, technologies, and affectivity and materiality more generally. While this new work draws on 21st-century theoretical approaches, it is also deeply concerned with the classical genealogy of concepts of the non-human. This course will survey such recent work in a range of fields loosely categorized under the umbrella of “Renaissance Non-Humanism,” including animal studies, ecological criticism, new materialism, and object-oriented ontology. Readings will include works by Plato, Lucretius, Ovid, Montaigne, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon, Cavendish, and Behn.