Universität Wien

123421 SE Literary & Cultural Studies Seminar / BA Paper / MA British/Irish/New English (2019S)

Performing the East in Early Modern Drama

11.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 12 - Anglistik
Continuous assessment of course work

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 18 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

Friday 08.03. 08:00 - 10:00 Raum 4 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-EG-19
Friday 15.03. 08:00 - 10:00 Raum 4 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-EG-19
Friday 22.03. 08:00 - 10:00 Raum 4 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-EG-19
Friday 29.03. 08:00 - 10:00 Raum 4 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-EG-19
Friday 05.04. 08:00 - 10:00 Raum 4 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-EG-19
Friday 12.04. 08:00 - 10:00 Raum 4 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-EG-19
Friday 03.05. 08:00 - 10:00 Raum 4 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-EG-19
Friday 10.05. 08:00 - 10:00 Raum 4 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-EG-19
Friday 17.05. 08:00 - 10:00 Raum 4 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-EG-19
Friday 24.05. 08:00 - 10:00 Raum 4 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-EG-19
Friday 31.05. 08:00 - 10:00 Raum 4 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-EG-19
Friday 07.06. 08:00 - 10:00 Raum 4 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-EG-19
Friday 14.06. 08:00 - 10:00 Raum 4 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-EG-19
Friday 21.06. 08:00 - 10:00 Raum 4 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-EG-19
Friday 28.06. 08:00 - 10:00 Raum 4 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-EG-19

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

This seminar explores late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century dramatic depictions and performances of male and female characters and settings from the East, a cultural and imaginative space which held great fascination for early modern dramatists and theatre audiences, comprising regions from the Eastern Mediterranean and Africa to East Asia. According to contemporary scholars, early modern English representations of the East and especially of Muslims and Islamic cultures were more ambiguous and fluid than in the period of Orientalism in the 18th and 19th centuries: they were tendentious, hateful, often polemic and sometimes favourable, characterised by a blend of fear, admiration, desire and imperial envy. Early modern drama contains stereotypical images and characters that still influence Western perspectives on the East (especially Islam), e. g. the cruel, aggressive or voluptuous male Turk/Muslim or the seductive (and in the context of early modern drama strikingly powerful) woman of the East. This seminar will examine if the selected dramatic texts can be said to belong to a period "before Orientalism" (as some scholars have suggested), not merely in historical but also in cultural and aesthetic terms. We will focus on the following questions: do early modern plays imagine the East in ways that cannot not be reduced to Orientalist binary oppositions between the culturally and morally superior West and the inferior East? Do the selected texts reproduce, endorse or challenge or unsettle such oppositions and strategies of Othering? What is the role of dramatic performativity in representations of cultural and gender identities in the plays, e. g. in the contexts of religious conversions and intercultural love relationships?

Assessment and permitted materials

Regular attendance (max. 2 absences), active participation in class, presentation, response paper

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Active participation in class: 10%
Response paper: 10 %
Presentation: 30%
Term paper: 50%

Students must attain at least 60% of each to pass the course.

Grading scheme:
1 (very good): 90-100%
2 (good): 80-89%
3 (satisfactory): 70-79%
4 (pass): 60-69%
5 (fail): 0-59%

Examination topics

There will be no written exam.

Reading list

Primary Texts:
- Christopher Marlowe: Tamburlaine the Great I/II (1578/1588)
- William Shakespeare: Othello (1604)
- William Shakespeare: Anthony and Cleopatra (1607)
- Robert Daborne: A Christian Turned Turk (1612)

Please purchase or borrow copies of Marlowe's and Shakespeare's plays (the Arden edition is recommended for Othello and Antony and Cleopatra and the New Mermaids edition for Tamburlaine I/II). A copy of Daborne's A Christian Turned Turk, together with all secondary literature for the course and the syllabus, will be provided at the beginning of the semester.

Association in the course directory

Studium: UF 344, BA 612, MA 844;
Code/Modul: UF 4.2.4-322, BA09.2, 10.2, MA4, MA6, MA7
Lehrinhalt: 12-0388

Last modified: Mo 07.09.2020 15:33