Literary History
Courses Online & in London

The Tudor age was one of change, exploration and innovation. This course will use literary evidence from the Early Modern period to explore key moments in the development of the English Renaissance at the Tudor court which shaped ideas about power and identity in sixteenth-century England.

How medieval people thought about themselves was shaped by the way they understood the world. This one-day course will examine the medieval understanding of the cosmos and Britain’s place within that. We will read key sources which reveal how the peoples of Britain understood themselves and their place in the world, and we will explore how this changed as the Early Modern era dawned.

Dream Visions were a hugely popular literary form in the ancient world and Middle Ages. These works were not merely descriptions of dreams, but became vehicles for philosophical and religious contemplation, advice, consolation, feminist polemic, rhetorical exempla and social critique. This one-day workshop introduces students to the genre of dream vision, contextualizing two of Chaucer’s poets’ dreams with earlier examples of the form and medieval scientific and literary theories. The main focus for the day is Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls and The Book of the Duchess.

The Divine Comedy is an imaginary journey through the three realms of the afterlife, a fascinating compendium of life in 14th century Italy. Dante's ability to depict humanity in all its aspects is timeless and has fascinated readers ever since its rediscovery in the 19th century.

Important food source, dear companion, or powerful allegory? Placing literary works alongside non-fiction and surviving material culture, this course explores the varied relationships between humans and animals in the medieval world.

This in-person six-week course brings together Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet and Ava Pickett’s 1536 to explore how contemporary writers reimagine Tudor history through intimate stories of marginalised figures. Through close reading, reading aloud and discussion, we’ll examine how Hamnet and 1536 challenge familiar ways of telling Tudor history, bringing private experiences into focus alongside the wider political and cultural forces of the period. With references to a range of historical fiction, we’ll ask how depictions of the past illuminate the preoccupations of the present.

Holly Maguire is a London-based teacher and former Head of English. She is a former Associate Teacher at the English and Media Centre and an Associate English Tutor for Teach First. She received the 2019 Goldsmiths Grant for Teachers, completing research into ‘Closing the Gender Gap’ in Swedish Schools.

Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio set the foundations of Italian literature taking the Tuscan vernacular and turning it into a literary language. Discover how they contributed to the shift from an essentially medieval worldview to Humanism and the Renaissance.