English 319SR - Lit/Science in the Renaissance

This course explores the interplay between literary art and scientific thinking in the period held as the dawn of modernity, in which the distinction between such as terms as art and science was anything but clear. Reading the works of prominent poets and dramatists (Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, Milton) alongside scientific and philosophical literature (Lucretius, Montaigne, Bacon, Burton) we will ponder the relation between aesthetic and empirical paths to truth. Topics will include the anatomical body, faculties of mind, illness and healing, matter and spirit, animals and plants, navigation, alchemy, and magic.