BA English Literature with Creative Writing

Shakespeare lived in an age that witnessed rapidly expanding overseas trade, an influx of immigrants into London, the widespread importation, translation, and imitation of contemporary European and ancient Greek and Roman books, overseas exploration and encounters with other civilizations and races, increasingly troubled relations between the four ‘British’ nations (England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland), religious wars with the Continent and the threat of foreign invasion. This course will explore early modern England’s lively and diverse transnational culture in relation to a wide range of Shakespeare’s plays, from histories to tragedies, and from problem plays to Roman plays. We will look at the presentation of foreign languages and characters on the stage, Shakespeare’s appropriation of foreign-language texts (both ancient and modern), and the plays’ use of foreign settings. We will also read the plays alongside a variety of foreign-language texts in translation, from language manuals to travel accounts, from Italian tales to Roman histories, and from treatises on European politics to essays on the New World. In so doing, the course invites you to examine the tension between England’s new self-assertiveness as a nation and an empire and the interrelations and interdependencies which existed between England and a range of foreign cultures in the early modern period. Exploring a variety of national, racial, religious, political, class, and gender identities within the plays, the course will encourage students to interrogate such concepts as ‘nation’, ‘language’, and ‘English literature’ in relation to England’s most iconic writer, William Shakespeare.

See outcomes.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• To think critically and in a theoretically informed way about issues of nationality, empire and the transnational in a range of Shakespeare’s works
• To engage with the different forms and genres of Shakespearean drama
• To discuss knowledgeably and critically the diverse ways in which foreign languages and characters are represented in Shakespeare
• To present rigorous and persuasive arguments about the nature and effect of translation in its various guises
• To understand the relationship between England and various foreign cultures in the early modern period
• To interrogate such concepts as nation, language and English literature in relation to Shakespeare

Please see recommended reading.

1 x one-hour lecture per week

1 x two-hour seminar per week

Office hours for further individual and small group discussion

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Conduct extended close readings with careful attention to textual detail

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Analyse literary and other texts, and to construct and elaborate complex arguments through textual evidence, both in writing and in seminar discussions
• Use relevant library resources, databases and search engines, to locate material for discussion and for assessment purposes
• Demonstrate enhanced skills of written and verbal communication, analysis, and argument.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Analyse literary and other texts, and to construct and elaborate complex arguments through textual evidence, both in writing and in seminar discussions
• Use relevant library resources, databases and search engines, to locate material for discussion and for assessment purposes
• Demonstrate enhanced skills of written and verbal communication, analysis, and argument.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Construct a coherent, written argument
• Debate complex ideas in a group setting
• Manage multiple deadlines and negotiate group work
• The ability to research independently

Comparative essay on a transnational early modern English text and a Shakespeare play (40%)

 Essay (60%)

• Formative written feedback and tutorial discussion of essay plans
• Oral feedback on seminar presentations
• Formative written feedback on essays
• Optional tutorials to discuss seminar performance and written work

Indicative Reading List:

Henry IV, Part I

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Love’s Labour’s Lost

All’s Well That Ends Well

The Merchant of Venice

Othello

Cymbeline