|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Course Criteria
Add courses to your favorites to save, share, and find your best transfer school.
-
3.00 Credits
In this course we will read, in roughly chronological order, the plays from the second half of Shakespeare's career as dramatist. Beginning with Julius Caesar and concluding with Two Noble Kinsmen, we will cover nineteen plays over the course of the semester. Though we will read several comedies, the syllabus is dominated by the mature tragedies - Hamlet, Othello, Lear, and Macbeth - and late romances Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. This course is paired with Shakespeare I (Fall 2004), which covers the first half of the Shakespeare canon (though Shakespeare I is not a prerequisite for this course). Requirements will include a midterm, a final, several passage analyses, and one 5 to 7 page paper.
-
3.00 Credits
Questions of the developing interest in the concept of human nature in late 17th- and early 18th-century literature: What does it means to be human? Are humans animals? Are humans naturally selfish or benevolent? Are gender differences natural or cultural? What sort of obligations do humans have to the rest of the creation? What is the relation of the sort of innocence that the pope imagined as "the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" to mature development?
-
3.00 Credits
A critical analysis of religious influences and iconography in selected Shakespeare plays.
-
3.00 Credits
An analysis of how Shakespeare's migrations between rural England and metropolitan London affected his writings.
-
3.00 Credits
This course is designed as an introduction to the study of women and literature of the Renaissance period in Europe. It will treat the subject of the Renaissance woman" in three ways. First, there will be a brief historical overview of the condition of women of different social classes during this period, focusing on topics such as their education, the role of marriage, and the convent as an alternative to married life. Secondly, it will survey how women were viewed in the literature written by men in various European countries. Here we shall read excerpts from Dante and the courtly love tradition, Petrarch and the Petrarchists, Shakespeare, and Rabelais, among others. We shall also consider the portrayal of women in artistic works of this time, comparing this to their literary representation. Next, we shall study the literature created by women during the Renaissance in Europe. During this part of the course, we shall consider some of the problems generated by women's writing, using Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own as a point of departure for our discussions. At the end of the course, we will resume our study of the image of woman in the Renaissance by reading a modern play set at that time (Peter Whelan's The Herbal Bed on the trial of Shakespeare's daughter) that treats some of the issues facing women at that time. All foreign texts will be read in English translation.
-
3.00 Credits
This course will cover not only standard film versions of the plays but also adaptations and appropriations in order to examine the way in which Shakespeare circulates in popular and elite culture. Likely films include: Olivier's Hamlet and The Last Action Hero (with Arnold Schwarzenegger); Zeferelli's Romeo and Juliet, Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, and Shakespeare in Love; Polanski's Macbeth and Billy Morrissette's Scotland, PA; Derek Jarman's The Tempest and Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books. In each case, we will begin with a reading of the play before moving on to film versions and adaptations.
-
3.00 Credits
How Tolkien and Lewis used allegory and symbolism in their writings.
-
3.00 Credits
This course focuses intensely on two of the Renaissance period's most influential writers -- William Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser. Both writers engage deeply with the imaginative work that fiction can do in addressing the deepest desires and fears; both theorize the imagination's powers as well as its distortions and limitations. Through an intensive study of these writers, students will learn to reflect carefully on their own reading and interpretive processes, as well as on the capacities and horizons of imaginative writing itself.
-
3.00 Credits
This course will examine the four tragedies upon which Shakespeare's reputation most securely rests: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Our objectives will be to acquire an in-depth knowledge of Shakespeare's four major tragedies; to become familiar with early modern English and develop an appreciation of the importance of linguistic history; to examine tragedy as a dramatic genre, as an experience, and as a cultural preoccupation; and to learn about Shakespeare's age and his afterlife. Along with our modern editions of Shakespeare, we will read Christopher Haigh's Elizabeth I and a number of recent scholarly essays. Work will include several short written assignments, a midterm, a final, and a paper of 7-10 pages.
-
3.00 Credits
Beowulf is one of the oldest poems in English, the closest thing we have to a medieval English epic, a literary monument of extraordinary complexity, and a study in heroic behavior that evaluates and problematizes every aspect of the folklore, myth, and legend that it weaves into its narrative. The relationship between Beowulf and early medieval heroic legend will be front and center in this course, which will undertake a close reading of the poem set against several comparable exemplars of heroic behavior in neighboring medieval traditions, including the Old English Battle of Maldon, the Old High German Hildebrandslied, the Old Welsh Gododdin, the Latin Waltharius, the Old Irish Táin Bó Cúailnge, the Old French Chanson de Roland, and the Old Icelandic Hrólfs saga kraka (all in modern English translation). We'll look carefully at how heroic characters are represented and defined in these texts, and we'll consider the part played by feud, revenge, honor, loyalty, and social bonds and allegiances in constructing a heroic ethos. Weekly response papers, two essays, and a final exam.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Privacy Statement
|
Cookies Policy |
Terms of Use
|
Institutional Membership Information
|
About AcademyOne
Copyright 2006 - 2025 AcademyOne, Inc.
|
|
|