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

“Mislike me not for my complexion, The shadow'd livery of the burnish'd sun”: identity, politics of desire and gender roles in the Shakespearean and Elizabethan theatre.

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

The Shakespearean play-texts analyzed during the course will be explored in dialogue with the political discourses, England’s emergent colonial politics, issues of gender, race and class. They will be also investigated in their interconnection 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

W. Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus

Christopher Marlowe, Edward II

W. Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

W. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

W. Shakespeare, The Tempest

 

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.

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.

Traub Valery, “Gender and sexuality in Shakespeare’s England”, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare, eds. Margareta de Grazia, Stanley Wells, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 129-146.

(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