123422 SE Literary & Cultural Studies Seminar / BA Paper / MA British/Irish/New English (2017S)

Many of Shakespeare's plays concern themselves with questions of power: How to legitimise it? How to get it? How to hold on to it? Whether to share it? What to sacrifice for it? What not to sacrifice for it? Whether, when and how to, gracefully, let go of it? In this course we are going to look at two of Shakespeare's history plays and two of his Roman plays in order to explore Elizabethan notions of good and bad sovereign rule, of divine ordination, the conflict between legitimacy of leadership and the ability to lead, the fear of tyranny etc. Richard II (1595-97) and Richard III (1597) frame the War of the Roses. Deposing and murdering the legitimate king Richard II, the last of the Plantagenets, led to a conflict between two influential families, which wreaked havoc in England for a hundred years. This so-called War of the Roses, waged between the houses of Lancaster and York, only came to an end once the last Yorkist, Richard III, who had killed everyone standing between him and the throne, was defeated in battle by a man whose marriage brought the feuding families together and founded the Tudor dynasty, of which Queen Elizabeth I. - the reigning monarch while Shakespeare wrote these history plays - was the last scion. When it came to questions of power, Renaissance England not only looked to its own history, however, but also to that of ancient Rome, since Shakespeare’s contemporaries thought of themselves and their dominions as the legitimate successors to the Roman Empire. Thus all Roman plays are, amongst other things, also experiments the outcomes of which have direct consequences on how Renaissance England sees itself and its system of political power. In their own ways, both "Julius Caesar" (1598-99) and "Coriolanus" (1608), Shakespeare's last tragedy, deal with betrayal and the dangers of tyranny. We are going to use these two Roman plays as entry points to early modern thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of feudal rule and democratic structures.

This course is designed to build on your basic skills for analysing dramatic texts and grasping historical contexts. You will learn to use concepts put forward by (contemporary) literary or cultural theory to produce enriched readings of early modern plays without falling into the trap of anachronistic thinking. You will have opportunities to practice close reading and positioning yourselves (critically and in support of) scholarly texts. The specialist model will enhance your skills in structuring a discussion, while the feedback-loop will hopefully boost your learning curve.