Life-writing in Early Modern England
Renaissance Literature
English 246 / Prof. Shuger
Spring Quarter, Tuesdays, 3:00pm – 5:50pm
The course will begin with a variety of martyrologies, including Foxe’s Acts and monuments and Archbishop Laud’s scaffold speech, but then turn to consider, among other things, the first full-length autobiography written in England (albeit not quite in English but a made-up phonetic code), Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio medici, Lucy Hutchinson’s magnificent biography of her regicide husband, Richard Baxter’s spiritual autobiography, the autobiography of George Herbert’s big brother, plus maybe a few diaries, collections of letters, conversion narratives, and the like. There will be a lot of reading; a weekly paper in which participants will sketch ideas for possible seminar papers, dissertations, and articles; but no actual seminar paper.