Renaissance to Enlightenment (P01745)

? Credit Points : 40 ? SCQF Level : 11 ? Acronym : ACE-P-P01745

This course examines the ways in which historians, art historians, literary scholars and others have understood European cultural history of the period from the Renaissance, through the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century, to the Enlightenment. Students will be introduced to many of the significant ideas that have been developed to identify the central aspects of the cultural history of this period, from the self-understanding of contemporaries through to the scholarship of the present day. One major concept that will be subjected to critical analysis is the idea of the 'modern' is it legitimate, as has often been done, to see the modern world as having been born in the Renaissance, or later, in the time of the Enlightenment? Another debate that will be discussed is that over secularisation: is secularisation a key to the understanding of important developments in the period?

The students will be helped to see that the problems of understanding the period itself are part of broader questions of historical interpretation and method. In particular there will be critical consideration of the justifications for organising the history of human culture into periods such as Renaissance and Enlightenment and, if it is done, what value should be attached to those names. There will also be critical analysis of arguments about the relative importance to the cultural historian of contemporary self-understanding as opposed to retrospective interpretation? Students will be asked to reflect on the concept of culture itself and the nature of cultural history.

Entry Requirements

none

Subject Areas

Home subject area

History of Art, (School of Arts, Culture and Environment, Schedule A)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : Postgraduate

? Delivery Period : Full Year (Blocks 1-4)

? Contact Teaching Time : 2 hour(s) per week for 20 weeks

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course students will have:

- An interdisciplinary understanding of some of the important changes in European cultural life between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment

- An understanding of the variety of materials that can be used to explore this cultural life and the changes it underwent, from works of literature and art, to documents and formal treatises.

- A critical understanding of some of the principal ways in which these changes have been conceptualized and their significance articulated by scholars, both past and present

- A grasp of the methodological issues and problems of cultural history

- An understanding of ideas about the nature of culture and of the tools for its analysis, thereby equipping the students critically to analyse ideas about the culture of any period, including their own