Seminar in French Literature of the Renaissance: Renaissance Margins

Seminar explores the 'margin' as a defining textual and cultural space during the 16th century. We consider how the margin functions as a space of exclusion (ethnically, religiously, linguistically, politically, geographically, typographically, etc.) while also opening new possibilities of resistance, invention, and radical alterity. Readings include primary works (Marot, Labé, Léry, Montaigne, La Boétie, Paré) as well as theoretical & secondary works in book history, feminism, deconstruction, post-colonialism, ecocriticism, & social history that will provide us with methodological guides as we ask how to read in, and from, the margins.