Shakespeare

Semester and Year Offered: Winter Semester 2019

Course Coordinator and Team: TBD

Email of course coordinator:TBD

Pre-requisites:Interest in and awareness of English literature and some familiarity with the life and times of Shakespeare

Aim: The study of Shakespeare’s plays is important for any student of both European and non-European drama because many later dramatists have built upon, appropriated, subverted and adapted both his plays and dramatic forms. This course will familiarize students with the political and cultural context in which Shakespeare wrote. It will explore the subtle ways in which his representative plays engage with not just the dominant beliefs but also the anxieties and fears of his age. The course will also look at the reception of Shakespearean drama through the subsequent ages including late twentieth and early twenty first centuries both through critical literature and to a limited extent through the adaptations.

Brief description of modules/ Main modules:

The course is divided into five short modules. Three texts will be taken up for detailed study in class. Other plays of Shakespeare will be discussed during class presentations.

Module 1

Introduction to Shakespeare’s life and times and the ensuing debates in Early Modern England

Module 2

Othello

Module 3

Julius Caesar

Module 4

The Merchant of Venice

Module 5

Shakespeare in our time

Othello, (film) dir. Orson Welles

References:
• E.A.J. Honigmann ed. Othello by William Shakespeare, Arden edition (A& C Black, 1997)
• John Wain edited. Shakespeare, Othello, A Casebook (Macmillan, 1971)
• Drakakis John (ed), The Merchant of Venice (Arden Shakespeare Third Series). London:
Bloomsbury, 2011. Print
• Mahon JW & Ellen Mahon(ed), The Merchant of Venice: New Critical Essays. London:
Routledge, 2002. Print.
• Dusinberre, Juliet (ed), As You Like It. (Arden Shakespeare Third Series). London:
Bloomsbury, 1998. Print
• Smith Emma(ed), Shakespeare’s Tragedies. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003, Print.
• Ania Loomba, Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism. OUP, 2002
• Marianne, Novy, Shakespeare and Feminist Theory. U.K., Arden Shakespeare Series,
2017
• Heims Neil(ed), Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare Through Ages: The Merchant of Venice. London:
Chelsea House, 2007. Print.
• Loos Pamela(ed), Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare Through Ages, Julius Caesar. London: Chelsea
House, 2007. Print.
• Neil Heims(ed), Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare Through Ages, Othello. London: Chelsea House
Publishers, 2008. Print.
• De Grazia Margareta & Stanley Wells(ed), The New Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print

Tentative Assessment schedule with details of weightage: