127012 KO Critical Readings in Literature (2016S)

Students will gain the knowledge of the creativity of the selected representative 20th century Anglophone postcolonial literary authors (eg. Jean Rhys and her novel Wide Sargasso Sea and individual shorter texts). They will identify the most significant literary movements and describe the specificity of the cultural 20th century developments in the former British Empire. In this light they will particularly analyze the selected Shakespeare's plays by applying the postcolonial critical approach, which will be discussed at the beginning of the course.
- Orientalism, postcolonial critical paradigm.
- An overview of the various theoretical approaches in contemporary Shakespeare criticism. Postcolonial Shakespeares on stage and film.
- A detailed analysis of his plays (Othello, The Tempest, Antony and Cleopatra, Macbeth) from the postcolonial point of view and the different possibilities of their staging as well as the film adaptations.

Students will gain the ability
- to understand the postcolonial critical approach
- to acquire the knowledge about the development of various types of critical approaches to the plays of William Shakespeare.
- to reflect on the postcolonial interpretive approaches to some of Shakespeare's plays in relation to the specific cultural environment.
- to analyze individual contemporary film adaptations of Shakespeare's plays in comparison with the original texts.

Seminar, e-learning platform