ENGL 215 - Pre-modern Drama: Text and Performance before 1800

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Study of selected dramatic texts and their embodiment both on the page and the stage. Authors, critical and theoretical approaches, dramatic genres, historical coverage, and themes may vary from year to year.

Topic 2023/24b: Fatal Distraction: Desire and Violence in Early Modern Drama. This course explores “most foul, strange, and unnatural” acts of affective transgression in a handful of early modern plays. In addition to Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, we discuss dramatic works such as Marlowe’s Edward II, The Revenger’s Tragedy, Webster’s Duchess of Malfi, Middleton and Rowley’s Changeling, and Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore. The course pays particular attention to various control mechanisms that shaped the discourse of gender and sexuality in the early modern context. Zoltán Márkus.

This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS