During Elizabeth I's reign, love poetry and dramatic comedy acquired a remarkable popularity and brilliance, unparalleled in English literary history. What is the "art"-the language, form, and rhetoric-of Elizabethan courtship? What kind of society generated this literary obsession, and conversely, what kind of culture and sexual relationships did the literature of courtship and seduction produce? This course explores the links between literary conventions and social conventions, sexual politics and court politics. It studies gems of English Renaissance literature (Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing, love poetry by Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, and Donne, Castiglione's The Courtier) along with court rhetoric, political negotiations, the first poem written and published by an Englishwoman, the first autobiography written by an Englishman, social debates over poetry, the theater, sexuality, clandestine marriage, women's lawful liberty. There will be short lectures and lots of discussion. Format: discussion/seminar. Requirements: weekly short essays or two 5-page papers, and a final research paper of 10-12 pages. Prerequisites: a 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit: 25 (expected: 20). (Pre-1700)