Difference between revisions of "2008-09 AM Power Plays, or: Life of the Courtiers on the Early Modern Stage"

Revision as of 17:53, 2 September 2008

• Lecturer: Dr. Isabel Karremann
• Contact: Isabel.Karremann@anglistik.uni-muenchen.de

Language and Power on the Early Modern Stage

Stephen Greenblatt was one of the first critics to draw our attention to the workings of language as an instrument of domination, be it national, racial, or sexual domination. In this course we are going to read four plays by Shakespeare which revolve around the issue of the power of language: language as 'the white man's magic' and colonialism in The Tempest; slander and its relation to race and gender in Othello; Macchiavellian strategies of simulation and dissimulation in Richard III; how a notion of 'Englishness' emerges from the different languages, dialects and sociolects in Henry V and, once again, how language functions as an instrument of national/ sexual domination. We are going to approach this issue with the help of historical contexts (e.g. essays by Michel de Montaigne and Francis Bacon) as well as the critical concepts developed under the aegis of New Historicism and Cultural Studies. The course is designed as a one-week 'Blockveranstaltung' which will be held in February 2009. There will be a preliminary meeting in December at which the course program will be presented in greater detail; you can sign up for the seminar during this meeting or via e-mail until January 15th 2009. Please check the page on StudiIP for exact date, time and venue.

Class requirements

1. regular attendance and active participation (you may miss no more than two sessions)
2. being an 'expert': you will give a short oral presentation of an historical or critical text and, based on this, prepare three questions which will form the basis of our discussion of the Shakespeare play in that session
3. a term paper (developing further your expert-topic or any other issue discussed in the seminar)

NOTE

• fulfilling the first two requirements will earn you a total of three credit points (3 KP)
• fulfilling all requirements will earn you a total of sic credit points (6 KP)

Course texts

• William Shakespeare, The Tempest
• ---, Othello
• ---, Richard III
• ---, Henry V

Please get a CRITICAL EDITION of the plays, preferably the Arden Sharespeare Third Series (which contains a lot of historical material) or the New Cambridge Shakespeare.