ENGL 519

Fall 2017 All Classes

All Classes

Seminar in Shakespeare

SHOW FINAL EXAM SCHEDULE

Credit: 4 hours.

May be repeated if topics vary. Prerequisite: A college course devoted entirely to an aspect of Shakespeare's work or consent of instructor.

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ENGL 519 class schedule data for fall 2017
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	62717	Lecture-Discussion	T	3:00PM -4:50PM	R	113 English Building	Newcomb, L	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/28/17-12/13/17 Section Title: Shakespeare and/as Romance Section Info: Topic SectionT: Shakespeare and/as Romance While Shakespeare’s lifetime is now celebrated as a golden age of drama, literary prestige was more often attached to the mode of romance: globetrotting, multi-strand narratives in prose, verse, or an artful combination. Key texts in this mixed mode included the most prestigious Elizabethan literary achievement, Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia; the first original fiction published by an Englishwoman, Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania; some of the best-selling fiction titles of the period (Robert Greene); wild fantasies (Margaret Cavendish) and misadventures (Francis Kirkman). Shakespeare drew romance elements into plays repeatedly: in the early Comedy of Errors, cross-dressing comedies such as Twelfth Night, and the genre-busting ‘late plays’ of his final writing years. In the mid-nineteenth century, Edward Dowden decided that these late plays constituted an author-specific genre of “Shakespearean romance”; he saw romance as a ‘native’ English world of fantasy rather than as a much-replicated international mode. Today, critics recover early modern mixed romances precisely because they investigate nation, gender, race, desire, privilege, and geopolitical encounter on a fantasized plane. Since such concerns also dominate Shakespeare’s last plays, Dowden’s category shifts from misnomer to something more fruitful. Why is early modern romance newly productive for scholarship today? How do new understandings of the romance mode allow us to interpret, contextualize, dramatize, and teach certain plays anew? Is the work of romance nostalgic or utopian, socially regressive or progressive? Our study of these intersecting genres will range from hands-on library work to theoretical analysis. Final research papers may trace an early modern text in historical context or in later reception. Anthology and select single titles TBA. Restriction(s): Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.