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The Human Animal in Early Modern Literature

Module description

In antiquity Aristotle famously listed man as a ‘political animal’ next to ‘bee, wasp, and crane’, yet separated man as ‘the only animal who has logon (speech/reason)’. Based on the teachings of the ancients, and living in a world of major religious, political, and cultural changes, early modern writers and thinkers tried to reformulate the relationship between humans, animals, spirits, and God. The rift of the Reformation, the expansion of urban commercial centres, the Civil Wars, and the advancement of scientific thought led to new models of enquiry and knowledge. This module will place the animal (i.e. the living being) at the heart of our understanding of early modern literature, interrogating its corporeal and spiritual nature as represented in literary texts, and examining the fragile boundaries between flesh and soul, humans and beasts, humans and the divine, and bodies and their natural or artificial environments.  

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module will introduce you to how the English literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries responded to key historical debates about human nature. In doing so, the module will enable you to develop the literary and historical research abilities required for in-depth, independent analysis of early modern texts and issues, gaining skills and knowledge that will enhance your ongoing study of English literature. Through engagement with a diverse range of primary sources, you will become familiar with important sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literary texts and trends, and gain an understanding of how this period’s imaginative preoccupation with questions of physical and metaphysical worlds remains significant today.  

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Describe historical developments that influenced early modern literature
• 2. Describe in detail specific works of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature
• 3. Demonstrate a critically-informed understanding of how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature responds to important historical, intellectual and social developments that occurred during the period
• 4. Engage with theoretical concepts relevant to the study of early modern literature

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Analyse the literature of an earlier era and to relate its concerns and its modes of expression to its specific historical moment
• 6. Interrelate texts and discourses with issues in the wider context of cultural and intellectual history
• 7. Understand and analyse relevant theoretical ideas, and to apply these ideas to literary texts

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 8. Through essay-writing, demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, construct a coherent, substantiated argument, and write clear and correct prose
• 9. Through preparation for seminars and essays, demonstrate organisational and time management skills, and proficiency in research, information retrieval and analysis

Syllabus plan

This is an indicative syllabus. Topics and texts many include some of the following:

• Humans, Animals, Spirits: Readings from Donne, Montaigne, Descartes, Cavendish, Baldwin, and Topsell Urban Beasts: Ben Jonson, Volpone
• Fairies and Asses: William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• (Human) Nature: John Milton, Paradise Lost (selections); Andrew Marvell, 'The Garden'; Lucy Hutchinson, De Rerum Natura
• Knowing Animals: poetry by Margaret Cavendish, Lucy Hutchinson, and Anne Bradstreet

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to redo the assessment(s) as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• See list given in syllabus plan.

Secondary reading:

• Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800 (1983)
• Erica Fudge, Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality, and Humanity in Early Modern England, Cornell UP, 2006.
• Bruce Boehrer, Animal Characters: Nonhuman Beings in Early Modern Literature. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
• Karen Raber, Animal Bodies, Renaissance Culture, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
• and “How to Do Things with Animals: Thoughts on/with the Early Modern Cat.” Early Modern Ecostudies: From the Florentine Codex to Shakespeare. Ed. Thomas Hallock, Ivo Kamps, and Karen L. Raber. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008. 93-113.

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE page: https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=8127
• Dictionary of National Biography
• Early Modern Literary Studies
• EEBO
• JSTOR
• Project Muse
• Renaissance and Reformation
• The Milton Reading Room
• World Shakespeare Bibliography Online

Key words search

Literature, Renaissance, early modern, human, animal, religion, faith, death, body, science, devil, angel, God, spirit