123220 SE Literary Seminar / BA Paper / MA British/Irish/New English (2024S)

After the beheading of King Charles the I., the Puritans reigned and theatres remained closed. When the Stuart came back from his French exile in 1660, to ascend the throne as Charles II., he brought with him the continental custom of allowing women to play roles on the public stage. His Royal decree meant that English patent and unlicensed theatres alike discontinued the tradition of boy actors. As theatrical plots changed, professional actresses were needed for the many roles that became available, and the cultural climate was right for a female playwright to shine. From 1670 onwards, Aphra Behn, who is said to have spied for the future Charles II. during the last years of the interregnum, built a career at the theatre, and became the first woman who managed to make a living by writing for the stage. In this seminar, we are going to look at four comedies penned within a decade: The Rover (part I, 1677), Behn's most popular play, which portrays a bunch of Englishmen stumbling around Naples at Carnival; The Feigned Courtesans (1679), which satirizes English nationalism and pokes fun at exaggerated fear of things Catholic; The Lucky Chance (1686), an underestimated play which sports a bed trick and a husband losing his wife, in a game of chance, to her lover; and The Emperor of the Moon (1687), a light-hearted farce based on a commedia dell' arte piece.

Specialist model:
Most importantly, this course should allow you to delve into a world that is both 'chronologically other' (for instance in its rigid class structure and its legal framework that does not give subject status to women), and oddly familiar (as far as human motivations and weaknesses are concerned and how they are being mocked, but also in terms of celebrity culture and an obsession with public opinion). As regards methodology: There will be no traditional student presentations in this class. Instead, you are expected to act as a specialist for one lesson of the term, either alone or as a member of a team, depending on the number of participants. How exactly this works in terms of timing, what will be expected of you and what a 'prep mail', 'the double-feedback-loop' and a 'golden nugget' is, in all of which you are going to participate, I shall explain in detail in the first lesson. You'll be expected to provide a powerpoint presentation as an accompaniment to your specialist task.

Quizzes:
There will be a text knowledge quiz for each of the four set plays, due before the lesson when we first discuss it. You will be able to fill in each quiz at home. Please send each filled-in quiz as a pdf-file or a doc-file attachment via email to sylvia.mieszkowski@univie.ac.at. NB: Any quiz sent in after the relevant class has started, will remain unmarked, which means you won't be able to collect points on it.