ENG 441/541 (65714/65234)
Dr. Grace L. Dillon CH 117Q
Office Hours: R 1-2 p.m. and 4-5 p.m. and by appointment
(503) 725-8144, dillong@pdx.edu
Class meets MW 4:40-6:30 p.m.

We will use the recent emphasis in Renaissance Studies on the transmission of cultures as a touchstone for focusing on issues of religion, social class, ethinicity, gender, and sexuality in early modern Europe as its empire expanded into "new worlds." This approach will involve us in discussions of topics including New World Enterprise and First Contact, Emerging Imperialism, Books of Chivalry, Visions of Utopia, Colonial War Epic, Ethnohistory, Textual Engendering, Queer Theory, Ovidian Gaze and Film Theory, Idolatry, Fetishism & Materialism, the Bakhtinian Carnivalesque, Reception Theory and Poststructurialist Criticism. Works will include Philip Sidney's Arcadia, Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, Lady Mary Jane Wroth's Urania, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, Thomas More's Utopia, Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World, Sir Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, Montaigne's "On Cannibals", Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, and Cervantes' Don Quixote.