Theatre

Shakespeare II: Tragedies and Comedies

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

Shakespeare II: Tragedies and Comedies ENAM 0835 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Seminars English & American Literature Theatre Spring 2024 Spring 2025 Spring 2026

Each seminar runs only if there is sufficient student demand. Shakespeare’s career from 1600 is renowned for its deep analysis of the human capacity for depravity and for ruin. The seminar examines this increasingly sombre mood, contemporary with Elizabeth’s last years and the developing sense in England of what is often described as a ‘Counter-Renaissance’. We will read a problematic late comedy before approaching four of the great tragedies. These provide analyses of the human capacity to err disastrously in a manner that had been unmatched since ancient Athens. Yet at the end of his public career, Shakespeare discovered a new balance, and the course will conclude with a look at the late ‘tragicomic’ plays.

Sample Syllabus:

Introducing Shakespeare
Twelfth Night
All’s Well that Ends Well
Hamlet
Othello
King Lear
Antony and Cleopatra
Pericles
The Winter’s Tale
The Tempest

Modern British Drama

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

Modern British Drama ENAM 0565 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Tutorials English & American Literature Theatre Autumn 2022 Autumn 2023 Autumn 2024 Autumn 2025 Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025 Spring 2026

At the end of the nineteenth century, theatre dominated the performing arts and encompassed a great variety of forms. Rapidly evolving stage technologies, and the development of film, radio and television have fundamentally changed the role of theatre in society and the kinds of works written for it. We will explore the nature of these changes and examine the unique aesthetic power of live performance. We will also consider television and radio drama, which (especially in the first thirty years of the BBC) was often intended to be live and not recorded.

This course consists of six broadly chronological strands and the course can be tailored to draw exclusively or mainly from one strand or be a combination of several.

Strand A. Early twentieth-century theatre

For example:

JM Synge: Playboy of the Western World
RC Sherriff: Journey’s End
Modernist theatre: TS Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral
Auden and Isherwood, The Dog Beneath the Skin; The Ascent of F6.
Christopher Fry: The Lady’s Not for Burning
Noel Coward: Private Lives; Blithe Spirit

Strand B. The theatre of the Absurd

For example:

Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot, Krapp’s Last Tape; Happy Days
Tom Stoppard: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead; Travesties
Heathcote Williams: AC/DC
Harold Pinter: The Room; The Birthday Party
David Hare: Slag

Strand C. The post-war stage and musicals

For example:

Joe Orton: Loot
John Osborne: Look Back in Anger
David Storey: Home
Simon Gray: Butley
Harold Pinter: The Caretaker, ‘Night’, No Man’s Land, etc
Peter Shaffer: Equus; Royal Hunt of the Sun
Lionel Bart: Oliver

Strand D. Television drama

For example:

Armchair Theatre, The Wednesday Play, Play for Today
Ken Russell: Debussy; Always on a Sunday; Dante’s Inferno
Ken Loach: Cathy Come Home
Mike Leigh: Meantime
Dennis Potter: The Singing Detective

Strand E. Theatre since 1990

For example:

Keith Waterhouse: Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell
Tom Stoppard: Arcadia
Caryl Churchill: A Mouthful of Birds; Serious Money
David Hare: Skylight
Sarah Kane: Blasted; Cleansed
Mark Ravenhill: The Cut
Jez Butterworth: Jerusalem
Mike Bartlett: Earthquakes in London

Strand F. The role of theatre

For example:

Peter Brook, The Empty Space
Howard Barker, ‘Arguments for a Theatre’
Shakespeare, the RSC, the British Council and the National Theatre
Student theatre

The Making of Europe

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

The Making of Europe CLAS / ENAM / HIST / GSFS / HARC / LITS / MUSC / PHIL / PSCI / RELI 2499 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Research Classics Comparative Literature Economics English & American Literature Film & Media Culture Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies History History of Art & Architecture Literary Studies Philosophy Political Science Religion Theatre Autumn 2022 Autumn 2023 Autumn 2024 Autumn 2025

The autumn semester Research Course occupies the first five weeks of the program. This will allow you to research a topic of your choice from any area of European history or culture in the period up to c.1750. You will identify a text or image, object or building you wish to explore (or a small group: for instance a selection of poems by a given author). You will formulate a question and write a 6,000 word essay. Some classes and field trips will help to get you thinking. Once you have identified the area you wish to work on, you will have weekly one-to-one meetings with an individual supervisor, who will also read and comment on your final draft. This project will help you with your tutorial writing later in our programme. It will also help you develop the research and writing skills needed for senior theses, graduate work, and similar challenges ahead.

There is no obligatory preparatory reading for this course. Anything written in Europe before c.1750 that captures your imagination would be worth looking at. Working with texts in translation is expected: many students work with translations from Latin and other languages. If you do wish to work in a language other than English that is welcome, to, but this will not automatically receive a higher grade. There is no textbook for this course, and you will not be under any obligation to purchase any volumes (although you may wish to do so). The resources of the Bodleian Library, Keble College Library, and the Feneley Library will almost always suffice.

Shakespeare I: Shakespeare in the 1590s

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

Shakespeare I: Shakespeare in the 1590s ENAM 0830 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Seminars Theatre Autumn 2023 Autumn 2024 Autumn 2025

Each seminar runs only subject to sufficient student demand. Shakespeare came up to London from the country, where he had already been associated with household players, just after 1590. He entered a lively world of public performance, already marked by such major dramatic presences as Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd. In this, the first half of his career, he showed a readiness to turn his hand to anything (including fairly trashy piecework collaborations with other playwrights). The seminar explores the variousness of this output, both comic and tragic. It also investigates Shakespeare’s enormous contribution to one craze of the 1590s, the English history play, and concludes (as it began) with Shakespeare’s contemplation of Roman history.

Sample Syllabus:

Introducing Shakespeare
Titus Andronicus
Henry VI, Part 2
Romeo and Juliet
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Themes and Issues
Much Ado About Nothing
Henry IV, Part 1
Henry V
Julius Caesar