Programs and Areas

Renaissance Literature Area

The Renaissance (or Early Modern era) refers to the period of English cultural history that spans roughly two hundred years from the late fifteenth to the close of the seventeenth century. As the term "Renaissance" or rebirth implies, this was a period of remarkable intellectual and artistic activity when poets, dramatists, essayists, and other amateur and professional writers helped to fashion a rich and complex national literary culture. With the advent of the printing press and the spread of literacy, increasing numbers of people began to read for both pleasure and edification, while the public theaters, first established in the 1570s, catered to a burgeoning audience of Londoners that could not get enough of the dynamic, innovative entertainments of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, and others.

The great literary works of the age like Shakespeare's Hamlet, Spenser's Faerie Queene, and Milton's Paradise Lost were all produced in a profoundly contradictory cultural and political context. For while this was a period of considerable continuity with the Medieval past, and period in which the Church and religion were at the center of most people's lives, it was also a time of change and instability. Between 1500 and 1700 England experienced two "revolutions": the first, the Protestant Reformation ushered in new ideas about spirituality and piety including an emphasis upon individual Bible reading; the second, a bloody civil war culminated in the execution of the monarch and inspired vigorous debate in areas such as political theory, law, and historiography.

As a period of study, the Renaissance has infinite riches and pleasure to offer students. From the works of Shakespeare to the poetry of Aemelia Lanyer (one of the earliest published women poets in English); from vernacular translations of the Bible to the erotic verse of John Donne; from epigrams to epics, poets to poetasters, the literature of the Renaissance will delight and teach all who encounter it.

English Faculty

Derek Alwes, Associate Professor
Richard Dutton, Humanities Distinguished Professor
Alan Farmer, Assistant Professor
David Frantz, Professor
Hannibal Hamlin, Associate Professor
Jennifer Higginbotham,
Christopher Highley, Associate Professor
John King, Distinguished Prof of Eng & Relig Studs
Phoebe Spinrad, Associate Professor
Luke Wilson, Associate Professor

Web Resources

The world wide Web abounds in resources for scholars of Renaissance and early modern literature and history. A few early modern journals are available, among them, EXEMPLARIA, Early Modern Literary Studies. For general compendia of Renaissance resources, try the Voice of the Shuttle or Early Modern Literary Studies' cache of online locales

Other Renaissance Work at The Ohio State University

Early Modern European History at Ohio State -- We offer a unified list of courses in western European history in early modern and modern times.
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies -- The Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies is an interdisciplinary unit in the College of Humanities dedicated to the study of Europe and its neighbors from the end of the Roman Empire through the seventeenth century.