123041 PS Proseminar Literature (2013W)

As recent movies, TV-series and Booker-prize winning novels demonstrate, the English Renaissance has not lost any of its appeal. In this course we will explore some of the reasons for this fascination by studying not only literary texts of the period but also their present-day adaptations and reworkings. Centre stage will be given to the most influential but at the same time most enigmatic literary figure of the English Renaissance, William Shakespeare. We will study one of his plays, Hamlet, and look at a selection of its present-day 'afterlives': Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, John Updike's Gertrude and Claudius, Alan Isler's The Prince of West End Avenue and Japser FForde's Something Rotten.