29072 - English Literature (1) (2nd cycle)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course the student grasps the main evolutionary lines of English literature and its relationship to European and American literature.

Course contents

“I hold the world but as the world, / A stage where every man must play a part”: Identity, Gender Roles, and the Politics of Desire in Elizabethan Theatre

The course explores the production of play-texts and the role of Elizabethan theatre as a space in which multiple voices, identities, and forms of knowledge are staged, negotiated, and contested. Early modern theatre will be examined as a site of reflection and of the (re)production of ideas, ideologies, and politics of desire, but also as a space of conflict in which the period defined gender, class, race, religion, and belonging are questioned and challenged.

The play-texts examined throughout the course will be studied in relation to the material, social, and cultural conditions that shaped their production, with particular attention to theatre as a collective and performative practice. The analysis of the texts will consider the transformations of English society between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on the connections between theatrical representation, the emerging English colonial expansion, the construction of alterity, and the formation of new social and cultural hierarchies.

Through the study of texts such as Sir Thomas More, Doctor Faustus, Edward II, The Merchant of Venice, and The Tempest, the course will explore representations of power, knowledge, sovereignty, marginality, and otherness, examining the ways in which Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre stages unstable bodies and identities.

Finally, the analysis of the texts will be connected to contemporary practices of rewriting and reinterpreting the canon, showing how early modern works continue to generate new perspectives on questions of gender, race, desire, and the production of knowledge.

 

Readings/Bibliography

Primary sources

  W. Shakespeare, Anthony Munday, Henry Chettle, Thomas Heywood, Thomas Dekker, Sir Thomas More (1595?)

Christopher Marlowe, Dr Faustus (1594)

Christopher Marlowe, Edward II (1592)

W. Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (1596/98)

W. Shakespeare, The Tempest (1610/1611) 

Secondary Sources:

Boose L. E., “The Father and the Bride in Shakespeare”, PMLA, vol. 97, n. 3 (1982) pp. 325-347.

 Kahn Coppélia, Roman Shakespeare. Warriors, Wounds, and Women, Routledge, London and New York. (selected chapters)

Loomba A. “Outsiders in Shakespeare's England”, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare, eds by M. de Grazia and S. Wells, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 147-166.

Stymeist, David, "Status, Sodomy, and the Theater in Marlowe's "Edward II"", Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 , Spring, 2004, Vol. 44, No. 2, Tudor and Stuart Drama (Spring, 2004), pp. 233-253

Vaughan V. M., Vaughan A. T., 1997, “Before Othello: Elizabethan Representations of Sub-Saharan Africans”, The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, Vol. LIV, n. 1, pp. 19-44.

(N.B. The final Syllabus and Reading List will be available on the first day of class)

Teaching methods

Frontal lessons aiming to provide students with some critical tools to approach literary texts, both in terms of linguistic analysis and of historical and cultural contextualization. Vision of some remediations and adaptations of the play-texts analysed during the class

Assessment methods

Essay and oral interview

Teaching tools

Students with SLD or temporary or permanent disabilities. It is suggested that they get in touch as soon as possible with the relevant University office (https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en) and with the lecturer in order to seek together the most effective strategies for following the lessons and/or preparing for the examination.

The Powerpoint files that will be used during the course will be available for students on the Insegnamenti Online website: https://iol.unibo.it/ .

 

Office hours

See the website of Gilberta Golinelli