“What seest thou…in the dark-backward and abysm of time?”–Shakespeare, The Tempest
How does our history shape the present moment? The future? Which stories from the past do we tell again (and again), and which do we choose to ignore or leave buried? What, in the words of Shakespeare’s Prospero, do we see when we look into the seemingly bottomless “abysm” of the past? We will use these questions to guide our study of sixteenth-century English literature, as we explore the various ways this period’s poets, artists, dramatists, and other writers adapted their social and cultural heritage. In looking at the period’s past, we will also consider it as part of our own past: how do the stories and forms of the sixteenth-century continue to be relevant to our world today? In utopias, epic narratives, Arthurian legends, verse poetry, and stories of political intrigue we will find the continued influence of writers ranging from Thomas More and John Foxe to Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare. We will use these various perspectives to gain a richer appreciation of the period’s literature and culture, as well as an understanding of our continuing fascination with “the Renaissance,” a time that we now also call “early modern.”