The Renaissance is a particularly interesting time period for me, because I spent my youth working at a Renaissance festival. Even though that was a fake attempt at what Renaissance life is like, the period seems so much more alive for me now as a result of it. I close my eyes and I think about the mini-Globe theater we had and our ten minute Shakespeare plays, the roaming fish monger, jesters, musicians, our Henry VIII, the knights and the jousting, the period costumes (and mine was authentic!), just everything.
I really, really enjoyed the class on Renaissance dreaming and I thought the insights on the politics and literary culture of the time period added a good dimension to our readings. The fascination with mixed forms (hybrids, hermaphrodites, amazons, gender-bending, etc.) was new to me and I think may inform my essay choice. The pagan element of Midsummer was familiar, but I'd always wondered how much of the prohibition lifting was taken seriously in an academic context, but it seems like it was pretty serious still.
Facinating stuff. I could just lose myself in it, which probably means that it would be a good direction to move in for the honors essay.