ENGL2120 Shakespeare

2019

4.5

1 x 2-hour seminar weekly

9 Units of Level 1 topics

ENGL2104 has been successfully completed

This topic will focus on the plays of William Shakespeare both as a window onto the richness of Renaissance culture and as works of current timeliness.

Students will be encouraged to imagine the plays both in their historical context and in the context of their own lives and concerns. We will study plays from all the major genres (comedy, history, tragedy, and romance), and explore the ways character, spectacle, poetry, and genre shape the experience of Shakespearean drama.

Special attention will be paid to the 'hot' issues in recent debates about Shakespeare, and students will have the opportunity to become acquainted with some of the scholarship surrounding this most famous of English writers.

In this topic students will address:

• the formal characteristics of genre, character, and poetic language in drama

• thematic and theoretical issues central to literary studies of historicism, canonicity, patriarchy, and timelessness

On completion of this topic students will have attained:

• an extensive knowledge of the life and works of Shakespeare

• a deepened grasp of theoretical issues concerned with addressing classic literature

• a deepened grasp of literary interpretative practice