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

Academic Year 2023/2024

Course contents

From page to stage: Bodies, identity and gender politics in the theatrical and geographical space of the Shakespearean plays

 

The course questions the role of Shakespeare's theatre as a 'space' of representation, contestation and (re)production of ideas and ideologies circulating during the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages.

The Shakespearean play-texts analyzed during the course will be explored in dialogue with English/British history and England’s view of Rome and the ideology of tranlsatio imperii, the political discourses, English colonial politics and the role of the mob. They will be also investigated in their interconnection with issues of gender and in dialogue with the representation/conception of the body (male and female) and its various functions in the religious, scientific, and medical knowledge of the age.

Readings/Bibliography

Primary sources:

 

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

Titus Andronicus, 1589/1593

Julius Caesar, 1599

Antony and Cleopatra, 1607

Cymbeline, 1611

Secondary Sources:

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

Elam Keir, “K. Elam, “Here is my space”: la teatralizzazione della storia in “Antony and Cleopatra”, in M. Tempera (a cura di) Dal testo alla scena, Clueb, Bologna, 1990.

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.

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. Films based on Shakespeare’s works.

Assessment methods

Essay and oral interview

Teaching tools

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

Office hours

See the website of Gilberta Golinelli