ENG 400 - HONORS

Renaissance Drama/Media/Culture

Professor Jim Swan

MWF    10:00 - 10:50                      (E)

An inquiry into the relation between English Renaissance stage practice and modern (20th/21st century) media, political & cultural theory.

 

 (1) In what ways have film and TV shaped our perception of Shakespeare and his contemporaries? What is the effect of translating their intensely verbal stage medium into today’s visual media? We will study one or two film adaptations in order to develop questions about Renaissance drama in relation to our 21^st century experience of textual, theatrical, and cinematic media.

 

 (2) Another series of questions will be concerned with the Renaissance representation of a public, political culture, chiefly on the stage, and how that relates to the American, TV-saturated representation of today’s public sphere and political process. Consider, for instance, George W. Bush’s projection of personal sincerity and conviction, the oft televised phrase, “In my heart I believe . . .” accompanied by a hand on his chest. In what way does this have public or political meaning? To what extent do our media substitute the private and “personal” for the public and political? To get a handle on such questions, we will read selections from Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas, and from recent criticism of their work, linking their analysis of private and public spheres to our reading of Renaissance plays.

 

 Likely dramatic texts include: Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Twelfth Night, Richard II, Much Ado, Hamlet, Macbeth; Dekker, Shoemaker’s Holiday; Jonson, Bartholomew Fair; Beaumont, Knight of the Burning Pestle.

 

 Each student will be asked to "kick-off" discussion of a text assigned for one of  the seminar meetings. This does not mean a full, formal presentation, but two or three questions that identify areas of interest in the text. At the end of the semester, a substantial essay (15+ pages) will be due.

 

Registration through the Undergraduate English Office, 303 Clemens Hall.

ENG 407

James Joyce

Professor Damien Keane

TTh     11:00 - 12:20

Reg. No. 236208

This course will serve as an introduction to the specialized study of the works of James Joyce. From the terse “scrupulous meanness” of the early writings to the linguistic expansion and encompassing humor of the later, Joyce’s works have both inspired and frustrated generations of readers and become the subject of a vast and fractious critical heritage. As daunting as the texts themselves can be for novice readers, this massive body of critical reception can seem immobilizing even for experienced scholarly readers. In order to reckon with the imposing reputation his writings have come to possess, we will work out from Joyce’s texts to consider how they propose and activate a new reader, a reader who learns what it is to read (its possibilities and obligations) in the act of reading Joyce’s works. As such, we will read most of his writings (some of his early journalism, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Giacomo Joyce, small sections of Finnegans Wake), although we will focus primarily on a full consideration of Ulysses and its compelling aesthetic, textual, legal, and political reception. We will also read some literary criticism, as means to attend to Joyce’s Irish provenance and the Irish contexts of his works; the institutions of modernism; the texts’ engagement with issues of gender and mass culture; and the bibliographic “construction” of his writings as published works (which will include use of the wonderful holdings of the Joyce collection here at Buffalo). Students will be expected to contribute fully to class discussions. Requirements will include three critical response papers (2—3 pages); quizzes (in lieu of response papers as we read Ulysses); one in-class presentation (about 15 minutes in length); and a final research essay (12-15 pages). There will be no final exam.