| Abstract: |
The course offers a detailed survey of the various representations of female desire in the English Renaissance, which is considered here not as an isolated cultural period, but in the context of the European Renaissance. We will approach the multiple configurations and transformations of female identity in this period in its relation to desire, understanding this latter term in the widest possible sense: both as biological/cultural compulsion and also as the impulse that allows the self to transcend its immediate context and transform it. Our aim will be to show how in the work of Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton, as well as on that of the women writers of the period, female desire is presented as an object of unending fascination and fear: as an impulse that seems to call for constant regimentation and control, but which can also manage to outdo these constraints, and rewrite them creatively, thanks to its transformative force. We will be discussing two texts in every one of the sessions: one set text belonging to the historical period we are examining, and a critical article which discusses and revises it in the light of out contemporary perspectives. |
guest ::
