Elizabethan Literature

Year
0
Academic year
2018-2019
Code
01011554
Subject Area
Área Científica do Menor
Language of Instruction
Portuguese
Other Languages of Instruction
English
Mode of Delivery
Face-to-face
Duration
SEMESTRIAL
ECTS Credits
6.0
Type
Elective
Level
1st Cycle Studies

Recommended Prerequisites

Not applicable.

Teaching Methods

A few lectures will provide the students with the required historical and theoretical background; most classes will be centered on the discussion of primary and secondary texts.

Learning Outcomes

The course provides students with general knowledge about the culture and the literature of the Elizabethan Golden Age, always bearing in mind the political issues at stake at the time.  Both literary and critical texts will be discussed, thus creating the awareness of the changes in the critical fortune of literary texts in time. Literary texts will be read in the historical context of their production, in relation with previous conventions, and taking into account their potential for contemporaneity, that is, for making sense to readers in the 21st century, four centuries after having been written. 

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

Shakespeare in Context

We will start by approaching Elizabethans´ use of convention in both poetry and drama, focusing on the intertextuality of the body of literary production under analysis. Given his place in the Western Canon, particular attention will be given to William Shakespeare’s work. “The Invention of the Human”, Harold Bloom’s key-category for reading Shakespeare, will be used as a tool to discuss the construction of modern subjectivity up to the contemporary globalized world. Sexual and ethnic identities, Alterity, the different nations inhabiting the British Isles, power and the imminence of death will be issues included in the approach to the literary texts to be discussed.

Head Lecturer(s)

Adriana Conceição Silva Pereira Bebiano Nascimento

Assessment Methods

Final evaluation
Exam: 100.0%

Continuous evaluation
Mini Tests: 25.0%
Other: 25.0%
Frequency: 50.0%

Bibliography

Bloom, Harold (1999). Shakespeare:  The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead Books;

Garber, Marjorie (2004). Shakespeare After All. New York: Random House

Greenblatt, Stephen (2005). Renaissance Self-Fashioning. From More to Shakespeare. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press;

Hawkins, Harriet (1990). Classics and Trash: Traditions and Taboos in High Literature and Popular Modern Genres. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf;

Hollander, John & Kermode, Frank (1973). The Literature of Renaissance England. Oxford: Oxford University Press.