MENMD3TSB: Topics in Shakespeare and Shakespeare's Background
Credits: 20 credits
Module Director: Dr Astrid Stilma
This module aims to encourage students to analyse Shakespearean texts in their historical and cultural contexts. It seeks to bring the cutting edge of current critical theory to the study of Shakespeare’s work and to the world in and for which Shakespeare wrote. The content of the module will vary according to the ‘topic’ selected for study.
In 2012-2013 the particular focus will be on “Shakespeare’s Afterlives”: responses to and rewritings of Shakespeare's plays by his contemporaries and by later generations. In addition to the plays themselves we will study, among other things, late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century rewritings, the handling of Shakespearean themes in (post-)modern novels and Shakespeare in performance (theatre and film). Core texts on the module are likely to include The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, King Henry V and Romeo and Juliet.
The module will be assessed by means of two 2,500-word coursework essays, each making up 50% of the final grade.
For further information about this module, please contact Dr Astrid Stilma: astrid.stilma@canterbury.ac.uk|.