633 Description | 633 Requirements

1/12 Course Expectations and Requirements

New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, and the Early Modern English Stage

Viewing: Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

1/19 Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595-1596)

Louis Montrose, "'Shaping Fantasies': A Midsummer Night's Dream and Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture" (Hand-out)

Jean Howard, "Renaissance Theatre and the Representation of Theatrical Practice," The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England, 1-21

Jean Howard, "'Sathans Synagogue,'" The Stage and Social Struggle, 22-46

1/26 Shakespeare, As You Like It

Catherine Belsey, "Disrupting Sexual Difference: Meaning and Gender in the Comedies" from Alternative Shakespeares (in supplementary readings)

Lisa Jardine, "'As Boys and Women are for the Most Part Cattle of this Colour': Female Roles and Elizabethan Eroticism," from Still Harping on Daughters (in supplementary readings)

Valerie Traub, "The (In)Significance of "Lesbian" Desire in Early Modern England," from Erotic Politics (in supplementary readings)

2/2 Marlowe, Edward II (c. 1592)

Goldberg, "Sodomy and Society: The Case of Christopher Marlowe," from Staging the Renaissance (in supplementary readings)

Goldberg, "The Transvestite Stage: More on the Case of Christopher Marlowe" (in supplementary readings)

2/9 Ben Jonson, Epicoene (1609-1610)

Mary Beth Rose, "Sexual Disguise and Social Mobility in Jacobean City Comedy," 43-77 (in supplementary readings--read only first part for this week)

Jean Howard, "Power and Eros," Stage and Social Struggle, 93-111 (Read only first part for this week)

Karen Newman, "City Talk: Femininity and Commodification in Jonson's Epicoene," Fashioning Femininity, 129-143

Rose, "Sexual Disguise and Social Mobility in Jacobean City Comedy," 77-92 from The Expense of Spirit: Love and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama (in supplementary readings--read second half of chapter)

Howard, "Sex and Social Conflict: The Erotics of The Roaring Girl," from Erotic Politics (in supplementary readings)

Howard, "Power and Eros," Stage and Social Struggle, 121-128

Research project and report on female and male cross-dressing, the sumptuary laws, the "Hic Mulier" pamphlet, the "Haec Vir" pamphlet and other related popular writing [5-8 page report due from student(s) involved in project]

2/23 Arden of Faversham (?1590; printed in 1592)

Belsey, "Alice Arden's Crime," Staging the Renaissance, 133-150

Lisa Jardine, "'Make Thy Doublet of Changeable Taffeta': Dress Codes, Sumptuary Law and 'Natural' Order," from Still Harping on Daughters (in supplementary readings)

Research Project and Report on land ownership and land use issues under Henry VIII and Elizabeth: the dissolution of the monasteries, redistribution of abbey lands, enclosing of common lands, increase in sheep raising and wool industry; also may consider economic dislocations, vagrancy, poverty, the Elizabethan poor laws, disruptions of the class system, "upstart" middle-class landowners, etc. [5-8 page report due from student(s) involved in project]

3/1 Thomas Heywood, A Woman Killed with Kindness

David Underdown, "The Taming of a Scold" from Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (in supplementary readings)

Haselkorn, "Sin and the Politics of Penitence: Three Jacobean Adulteresses" from The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print (In supplementary readings)

3/22 Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611)

Brown, "'This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine': The Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism" from Political Shakespeare (In supplementary readings)

Barker and Hulme, "'Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish': The Discursive Con-Texts of The Tempest" from Alternative Shakespeares (in supplementary readings)

3/29 Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1604)

Newman, "'And Wash the Ethiop White': Femininity and the Monstrous in Othello," Fashioning Femininity and English Renaissance Drama, 71-93

Ania Loomba, Gender, Race, and Renaissance Drama, Introduction, Chapters 2-3 (in supplementary readings)

4/5 Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedie of Miriam, The Faire Queene of Jewry (?1604-1609; printed in 1613)

Ferguson, "The Spectre of Resistance" from Staging the Renaissance (in supplementary readings)

Fischer, "Elizabeth Cary and Tyranny, Domestic and Religious" from Silent But for the Word (in supplementary readings)

4/12 Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (acted 1612-1614; printed 1623)

Rose, "Heroics of Marriage in Renaissance Tragedy" from The Expense of Spirit: Love and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama (in supplementary readings)

Jardine, "'I am the Duchess of Malfi Still': Wealth, Inheritance, and the Spectre of Strong Women," from Still Harping on Daughters, 68-102 (in supplementary readings)

Choosing a Target Audience and Writing a Letter of Submission

4/19 John Ford, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (?1629-1633; printed in 1633)

 Peter Stallybrass, "Patriarchal Territories: The Body Enclosed" from Rewriting the Renaissance (in supplementary readings)

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