ENG 5093 Love and Heroism in the English Renaissance
When 21st century Americans imagine Renaissance heroism, we often pictures a knight in shining armor and a damsel in distress. What we often overlook, however, is that there was significant tension in the English Renaissance between concepts of love and heroism, which were thought of as separate, overlapping, and often competing value systems. In this course, we will examine how Renaissance writers used literature about love and heroism to think about what it meant to be a "good man," an important philosophical question as England solidified its transition from Catholicism to Protestantism.