Module ENGL3801: Shakespeare's Afterlives

Department: English Studies

ENGL3801: Shakespeare's Afterlives

Prerequisites

• Successful completion of ENGL2011 Theory and Practice of Literary Criticism or ENGL2021 Shakespeare.

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• Students will read Shakespeare’s original texts alongside a wide-ranging and transhistorical set of adaptations, allowing them to gain a broader understanding of Shakespeare’s reception (both in England and internationally) and the ongoing evolution of his plays.
• In addition to examining Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, this module provides an introduction to Shakespearean texts from a number of different historical periods, from the Restoration through the twenty-first century.
• Students gain experience analyzing different literary and dramatic forms, including film, theatrical performance, and opera.
• The module will address a number of the themes raised by the plays—for instance translation, cosmopolitanism, regionalism, race, and gender—and how those themes have been amplified or diminished based on the context of each adaptation.

Content

• Each seminar meeting will be based around a single play. Primary reading will include Shakespeare plays across several genres and from a number of different periods in Shakespeare’s career: Hamlet, The Tempest, King Lear, Richard III, Henry IV Part 1, Macbeth, Othello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, and As You Like It.
• These plays will be read alongside stage, film, and print adaptations including: the First Quarto text of Hamlet (1603), John Dryden and William D’Avenant’s The Tempest (1670), Nahum Tate’s King Lear (1681), Colly Cibber’s Richard III (1740), Verdi’s opera Falstaff (1893), Akira Kurosawa’s film Throne of Blood (1957), Mello da Costa’s Sonho de uma Noite de Verao (2004), Vishal Bhardwaj’s film Omkara (2006), Tim Carroll’s Twelfth Night (2012), and Jessica Bauman’s Arden/Everywhere (2017).
• Secondary material will include readings from scholars of performance studies and theater history, as well as of reception, adaptation, and global Shakespeare, such as: Margaret Jane Kidnie, Jenny Davidson, Sonia Massai, Ania Loomba, Shormishtha Panja, Kim Hall, Michael Dobson, Ken Takiguchi, Alexa Huang, and Jyotsna Singh.
• In sum, fortnightly readings will consist of one Shakespeare play in its original form, one adaptation of that play, and one work of scholarship (either in excerpted form or in its entirety).
• This module will also involve a collaboration with Durham University Library’s Special Collections. Students will have the opportunity to view some of the earliest printed texts of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as copies of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century adaptations that we will be discussing in the course. These may include items such as the Durham First Folio held in Bishop Cosin’s Library (Cosin W.2.11) and the copy of Nahum Tate’s King Lear held in Palace Green Library (Special Collections SC 07178/2).

Learning Outcomes

• Students will develop a detailed, in-depth knowledge of ten Shakespeare plays.
• To learn both about specific Shakespearean adaptations as well as literary adaptation more generally.
• To develop a critical appreciation of how Shakespearean adaptations are shaped by significant historical, cultural, and political contexts.
• Students will gain experience with critical discussions surrounding Shakespeare’s global reach and the extent to which he is a “universal” author; students will engage with and contribute to these discussions through their written work.
• In addition to the close reading of original Shakespeare texts, students will be introduced to the analysis and close reading of different kinds of multimedia “texts,” including film, recordings of theatrical performances, and operatic scores.
• To gain hands-on knowledge of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century print culture.

• Students studying this module will develop:
• critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts
• an ability to demonstrate knowledge of a range of texts and critical approaches
• informed awareness of formal and aesthetic dimensions of literature and video games and ability to offer cogent analysis of their workings in specific texts
• sensitivity to generic conventions and to the shaping effects on communication of historical circumstances, and to the affective power of language
• an ability to articulate and substantiate an imaginative response to video games and literature
• an ability to articulate knowledge and understanding of concepts and theories relating to literary studies
• skills of effective communication and argument, in both visual and written media
• awareness of conventions of scholarly presentation, and bibliographic skills including accurate citation of sources and consistent use of scholarly conventions of presentation
• command of a broad range of vocabulary and an appropriate critical terminology
• awareness of literature as a medium through which values are affirmed and debated

• Students studying this module will develop:
• a confident and mature capacity to analyse critically
• an enhanced ability to acquire complex information of diverse kinds in a structured and systematic way involving the use of distinctive interpretative skills derived from the subject
• enhanced competence in the planning and execution of essays
• an enhanced capacity for independent thought and judgement, and ability to assess the critical ideas of others
• skills in critical reasoning
• an ability to handle information and argument in an informed and critical manner
• information-technology skills such as word-processing and electronic data access information
• strong organisation and time-management skills

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Seminars: encourage peer-group discussion, enable students to develop critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts, and skills of effective communication and presentation; promote awareness of diversity of interpretation and methodology
• Consultation session: encourages students to reflect critically and independently on their work o Independent but directed reading in preparation for seminars provides opportunity for students to enrich subject-specific knowledge and enhances their ability to develop appropriate subject-specific skills.
• Typically, directed learning may include assigning student(s) an issue, theme or topic that can be independently or collectively explored within a framework and/or with additional materials provided by the tutor. This may function as preparatory work for presenting their ideas or findings (sometimes electronically) to their peers and tutor in the context of a seminar.
• Coursework: tests the student's ability to argue, respond and interpret, and to demonstrate subject-specific knowledge and skills such as appreciation of the power of imagination in literary creation and the close reading and analysis of texts; they also test the ability to present word-processed work, observing scholarly conventions. In individual Special Topics, the essay may, where appropriate to the subject, take an alternative form, such as 'creative criticism'.
• Feedback: The written feedback that is provided after the first assessed essay allows students to reflect on examiners' comments, giving students the opportunity to improve their work for the second essay.
• For the second essay, students will be required to locate a Shakespeare adaptation on their own (a curated list will also be provided) and investigate its history, artistic goals, reception, and significance. This project will allow for substantial independent work while also providing opportunities to present and discuss their findings with their peers and with the tutor.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Before the first assessed essay, students have an individual 15 minute consultation session in which they are entitled to show their seminar leader a sheet of points relevant to the essay and to receive oral comment on these points. Students may also, if they wish, discuss their ideas for the second essay at this meeting.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University