ENGL 71.15 Poetics of the Supernatural

“The instruments of darkness tell us truths,” warns Shakespeare’s Macbeth. While the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries took a complex view of the occult—witch-hunts spawned widescale bloodshed while alchemy paved the way for modern chemistry—this senior seminar examines how Renaissance writers used supernatural events to interrogate social structures of power and identity. Closely reading poetry and drama by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, we will ask how transformations, hauntings, and spells productively trouble categories of gender, temporality, ecology, and the human. Working with early modern historical archives and literary experiments, from week to week we will be challenged to consider how imaginative fiction, perhaps even more than realism, captures the tension and possibility that define eras of radical cultural change.

Instructor

Not being offered in 2022-23

Degree Requirement Attributes

Dist:LIT; WCult:W

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Department-Specific Course Categories

Senior Seminar: Course Group I