ENGL 633: Syllabus
633
Description | 633 Requirements | 633 Critical Readings
Please
choose one of the plays we will read this semester and write your bibliographic
essay about the scholarship on that play.
Your essay will be due on the night that we discuss that play unless the
play is very early in the syllabus. In
that case, we will decide upon a slightly later date for your presentation. I recommend that you write your final
scholarly essay about the same play.
1/14 Introduction: Goals, Expectations, and Requirements. Selection of five additional plays for the course
readings
"The
Elizabethan World Picture" vs. New
Historicist View of Early Modern England
New Historicism, Early Modern England, and Shakespeare's
plays
Discussion
of the historical and discursive contexts that shaped Shakespeare's texts.
Viewing
of Midsummer Night's Dream excerpts (BBC Production)
"Shakespeare's Festive
Comedy" As Disruptions of Gender and Power Relations: Midsummer Night's Dream and As You Like It
1/21 "This is to make an ass of me . . . " Or:
Disrupting natural, sexual, and political hierarchies
A
Midsummer Night's Dream (1594-95)
David
Underdown, “The Taming of a Scold”
Louis Montrose,
"’Shaping Fantasies’: Figurations
of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture"
Viewing of MND
excerpts (BBC Production)
1/28 Clothes make the man? Or: what happens when a boy actor plays a
female character (in love with a man but) disguised as a male with whom another
female character (played by a boy actor) falls in love?
As
You Like It (1598-1600)
Catherine Belsey,
"Disrupting Sexual Difference:
Meaning and Gender in the Comedies" (in
Readings
in Shakespearean Criticism” available through Web CT)
Viewing of
excerpts from BBC interpretation of AYLI
2/4 Play to be selected by class.
Shakespeare’s Less Mature Comedy
2/11 The
Taming of the Shrew (1590-1594)
Karen Newman,
“Renaissance Family Politics and The Taming of the Shrew” (in Readings
in Shakespearean Criticism available through WebCT)
Viewing of
excerpts from the Burton/Taylor interpretation of Shrew and BBC
Production
2/18 Play to be selected by
class.
2/25
"Is this the
promis'd end?" Or: Interrogating political, familial, and sexual
power relations
King Lear
Kathleen McLuskie,
“Patriarchal Bard: Feminist Criticism
and Shakespeare: King Lear and Measure
for Measure” (in Readings in Shakespearean Criticism available
through WebCT).
Viewing: excerpts from Olivier’s Lear
3/3 “Is
not pig great?” Or: Interrogating language, ideology, and power
Henry V
Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield, “History and Ideology: The Instance of Henry V” (will be in Readings in Shakespearean Criticism available through WebCT once it is scanned).
Viewing of excerpts of Kenneth Branaugh’s production and Oliver’s production
3/10 Play to be selected by
class.
Spring Break
3/24 "Fair is foul, and foul
is fair ..." Or:
Language and power unravel
Macbeth (1606-7)
Scholarly article
about the play TBA (once selection is made, it will be in Readings in
Shakespearean Criticism available through WebCT).
Viewing of
excerpts from BBC production
3/31 Play to be selected by
class.
4/7 Play to be selected by class.
Interrogations Of Race and Colonial Expansion
4/14 "An
Old Black Ram is Tupping Your White Ewe": Or, Gaps in the discourses of racial and sexual
difference
Othello (1604)
Karen Newman's "'And Wash the Ethiop
White" OR Anis Loomba, “Sexuality and Racial Difference” (in Readings in Shakespearean Criticism
available through WebCT).
Viewing of excerpts from
Branaugh production and BBC Production
4/21 "That
Foul Conspiracy of the Beast Caliban"
Or: Gaps in legitimizing
colonialism
The Tempest
(1610-11)
Barker and
Hulme's "Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish: The Discursive Contexts of The Tempest”(in Readings in
Shakespearean Criticism available through WebCT).
4/28 Scholarly Essay Due. Presentation of final scholarly papers to
rest of class.
633 Description | 633
Requirements | 633 Critical
Readings