Humanities 3: Renaissance, the Reformation, and Early Modern Europe

fall 2024


Required Texts

  • William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (Pelican)

  • Juana Inés de la Cruz, Selected Works, trans Grossman (Norton)

  • Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans Bondanella (Oxford)

  • Michel de Montaigne, Selected Essays, trans Atkinson & Sices (Hackett)

  • Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Norton Library)


Class Schedule

9/26        Introduction

10/1       William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
10/3       Shakespeare continued 

10/8        Shakespeare continued
10/10       Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, “Prelude to Narcissus”

10/15       Sor Juana, selected poetry
10/17       Sor Juana, Love Is the Greater Labyrinth
10/17 @6pm Humanities Event | Staged reading of Love Is the Greater Labyrinth (details forthcoming)

10/22       Sor Juana, “Letter from Sor Filotea” & “Response of the Poet
10/24       Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, p3-105

10/29       Machiavelli continued
10/31       Hannah Arendt, selection from On Violence

11/5       Étienne de la Boétie, “Discourse on Voluntary Servitude” (in Montaigne’s Selected Essays)
11/7       Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: “To the Reader,” “On Solitude” (I.39), & “On Friendship” (I.27)

11/12       Montaigne, “On the Cannibals” (I.31) & “On Repenting” (III.2)
11/14       Montaigne, “On Repenting” (III.2) 

11/19       Montaigne, “On Cruelty” (II.11)
11/22      Speech of James I & selection from Hobbes’ Leviathan 

11/26      Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (selections)
11/28     No class, Thanksgiving Holiday 

12/3        Hobbes continued    
12/5        Democracy & the English Civil War (readings tbd)