The Renaissance: Concepts and Issues

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: Stephen Clucas

What is and what was ‘the Renaissance’? Taking these questions as its theme, the core course of the MA supports you in developing an analytical grasp of the most influential approaches to Renaissance Studies since the field was founded. Your task is to read key works to which current scholars still react. You need to read them critically and analytically and take notes. Some useful questions for each text are: what kind of a ‘Renaissance’ does Jacob Burckhardt/Elizabeth Eisensttein/Joan Kelly offer us? What is their method and how does it work? What issues do these texts investigate? What do they see as driving the ‘Renaissance’? What do they leave out?

By the end of the module you should be able to approach the rich primary resources of the Renaissance with, perhaps, fewer certainties but a solid sense of how the field has been shaped; a grasp on some possible methods; an emerging sense of what you need to do as a scholar to make your contribution to the field.

We know that you want to start exploring primary Renaissance texts whether visual, literary or cultural. But in introducing you to the different methods scholars have used to study the Renaissance, the core is intended to give you a head start in finding your way. By the end of the module you should be very familiar with JSTOR and the MHRA style sheet. You should also have become a reader at the British Library and the Warburg Institute. In the summer core we will come back to the material texts of the Renaissance.