You can specialise in Renaissance literature as part of the MPhil in English Studies in the Cambridge Faculty of English. The MPhil offers a number of courses in Renaissance literature and culture, led by specialists and frequently drawing on their own current research. The offering varies each year: recent courses include ‘1590-something’, ‘Crossroads of Knowledge in Early Modern England: Interdisciplinary Approaches’, ‘Early Modern Collaborations’, ‘Animal and Human in the Renaissance’, and ‘Exuvial Renaissance’. In addition, the MPhil includes the opportunity for an introduction to the study of early modern printed books, manuscripts, and palaeography, taught ‘hands-on’ in the Cambridge University Library and making extensive use of its unparalleled holdings of early printed books and manuscripts.
The MPhil programme also includes ‘Research Framework’ courses that focus on central critical and theoretical preoccupations in literary studies. In 2023-4 these include ‘Poetry and Poetics’, ‘Politics and Culture: Capitalism, Ecology, Decolonisation’, ‘Material Texts’, ‘Literature and Philosophy’, ‘Narrative and its Mediations’, and ‘Bodies’: these courses are trans-historical and co-taught by Faculty members with different research interests, including some of the Faculty’s Renaissance specialists. There is a regular Renaissance research seminar attended by Faculty members and graduate students, with a mixture of internal and external speakers, and other Faculty research seminars (for example, the ‘Material Texts’ seminar) often have a Renaissance focus. Weekly early modern email bulletins make it easy to attend Renaissance research events in other faculties and departments, and interdisciplinary dissertation projects are welcome: the Faculty’s own Renaissance specialists include people with interests in poetics, performance, visual and material culture, classical reception, music, philosophy, theology, botany, early America, law, and translation.
The Renaissance pathway through the Cambridge MPhil in English Studies offers an exciting free-standing course for anyone interested in early modern literature and culture, but also provides an excellent basis and training for doctoral research. It’s a good way to test a vocation in early modern studies, while enabling students to keep their options open. Our ambition is to offer a far-reaching course which allows students to engage in intensive critical and conceptual thinking about early modern literature, and the study of the material text, alongside students working across the whole range of literatures in English.
Faculty members involved in teaching and supervising students on Renaissance topics include
