Academic Year 2013-14

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Representations of Love and Death (22343)

Degree: Humanities
Year: 3rd/ 4th
Term: 2nd
ECTS credits: 5
Teaching language: English
Professors: Miquel Berga & Pere Gifra

1. Course description

Reading Shakespeare: Stage, Film and Opera.

 

This course examines the topics of love and death through a close reading of four Shakespearean plays, two comedies (As you Like it, Much ado about Nothing) and two tragedies (Othello, Macbeth). Special attention will be paid to the context of Elizabethan drama and the language of the English Renaissance, as well as to the main features of Shakespeare's comedies and tragedies. The course will explore the transition from text to stage and consider the plays in performance. Likewise, adaptations of the plays into film and opera will be examined in order to identify contemporary approaches and readings of the Shakespearean canon through time and different artistic media.

2. Competences to be attained

General competences

Specific competences

 

•1.       Instrumental skills

  1. Arguing, that is, defending or justifying a certain position in written and in speech.
  2. Having deductive reasoning skills; reaching a conclusion from a series of premises.
  3. Generalising, or extracting a general norm from a limited amount of data or examples.
  4. Transmitting, in written and in oral speech, and in a well organised fashion, the acquired knowledge.
  5. Analysing and synthesising information taken from a variety of sources.
  6. Organising and planning academic work.
  7. Using previous knowledge in any learning activity.
  8. Applying theory to practice.

•2.       Interpersonal skills

  1. Group work and meaning negotiation skills.
  2. Individual work skills.
  3. Integrating group work in the autonomous work.
  4. Communicating interpersonally in a small and in a big group.

•3.       Systemic skills

  1. Creativity.
  2. Self-learning and continued learning skills.

 

•1.       Knowing, situating and interpreting Elizabethan drama.

•2.       Analysing the evolution of the linguistic and rhetorical registers of the language of the English Renaissance

•3.       Contextualizing the evolution of Shakespeare's drama and understanding its main features.

•4.       Understanding the structure and the main elements of some of Shakespeare's comedies and tragedies

•5.       Carrying out close readings of single plays by paying attention to their linguistic, thematic and iconic features, as well as to their potential for staging.

•6.       Knowing some of the most significant contemporary film versions of Shakespearean plays.

•7.       Knowing and analysing the reception and performance of Shakespeare through the study of some of the most significant actors and directors.

•8.       Studying some of the most important operas based on Shakespearean plays. Analysing the presence of songs and music in Shakespeare's drama

•9.       Rewriting and creatively recreating some of the texts studied in the course.

 

 

3. Contents

Unit 1. Language and Drama in Elizabethan England.

Unit 2. The Comedies: As You Like It, Much ado about Nothing.

Unit 3. Adaptations into Film.

Unit 4. The Tragedies: Othello, Macbeth.

Unit 5. Adaptations into Film

Unit 6. Directors' views

Unit 7. Music in Shakespeare.

Unit 8. Shakespeare and Opera.

4. Evaluation

The final mark of this course will be based on a final exam (50%) and a personal creative re-writing project around one or more of the plays (50%). Instructions about this project will be provided in class.

Those students who fail the course will have to retake the exam during the following term.

5. Bibliography and resources

5.1. Main Bibliography (Class textbook)

William Shakespeare, The Great Comedies and Tragedies (London: Wordsworth Classics, 2005)      ISBN 978-1-84022-145-9

5.2. Complementary Bibliography

Frye, Northrop.  A Natural Perspective: the Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance. New York: Columbia University Press, 1965.

Jackson, Russell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2007.

Howlett, Kathy M. Framing Shakespeare on Film, Athens, Ohio UP, 2000.

Hyland, Peter. An Introduction to Shakespeare: The Dramatist and his Context. London: Macmillan, 1996.

Kermode, Frank. The Age of Shakespeare. New York: The Modern Library, 2004

Kermode, Frank. Shakespeare's Language. New York: Farrar Straus, 2000.

Leggatt, Alexander (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Comedy. Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2002.

Marsh, Nicholas. Shakespeare: the Tragedies. Basingstoke : Macmillan, 1998

McEachern, Claire (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy. Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2002.

Ronberg, Gert. A Way with Words. The Language of English Renaissance Literature. London: Arnold, 1992.

Zimmerman, Susan (ed.). Shakespeare's Tragedies. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1998.

6. Course Schedule

REPRESENTATIONS OF LOVE AND DEATH

 

Tuesdays

Thursdays

07/01 - 09/01

LECTURE

LECTURE

14/01 - 16/01

LECTURE

LECTURE

21/01 - 23/01

LECTURE

LECTURE

28/01 - 30/01

LECTURE

LECTURE

04/02 - 06/02

LECTURE

LECTURE

11/02 - 13/02

LECTURE

LECTURE

18/02 - 20/02

 LECTURE

GUEST LECTURE

25/02 - 27/02

LECTURE

LECTURE

04/03 - 06/03

LECTURE

GUEST LECTURE

11/03 - 13/03

GUEST LECTURE

GUEST LECTURE