Department of English

Topic: In and Out of the Archives

A bible printed on golden paper.  A hand-drawn map of sixteenth-century Tepeaca, Mexico.  Helen Mirren’s breastplate from Excalibur.  A miniature book of poems shaped like a flower.  What do all these items have to do with each other, and what do they have to do with early seventeenth-century English poetry? 

All these items are among the treasures of the Lilly Library, and they all help open questions and generate answers about the rich meanings of the poems written by John Donne, William Shakespeare, Aemelia Lanyer, and others.  In this course, we will combine close reading of the poems with individual and collaborative research in the archives to investigate religious revolution, colonial expansion, gendered power, and aesthetic beauty, among other topics. 

• A&H
• What are CASE requirements?