THEATRE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

This third-year course aims to perfect the skills gained in the first two years of the BA course in Lingue, Civiltà e Scienze del Linguaggio (literary and cultural path) and to strengthen the students’ basic knowledge of the history of English literature and culture. It will therefore focus on the early modern period (16th and 17th centuries), and will enhance the knowledge of the main literary phenomena within their historical and cultural (artistic, philosophical, epistemic) contexts.

The course aims to improve the students’ ability to use analytic instruments and methods, as well as to make autonomous judgements. The course, also in view of the writing of their BA dissertation and of further study, will enhance their skills in academic writing and in oral communication of the results of their research.

Classes will be held in English. Students must therefore be able to understand and critically discuss literary and cultural topics of the English Renaissance.
Students are recommended to read before the beginning of the course the plays of the programme.

Shakespearean Metatheatre

The course will deal with the aspects of Shakespeare’s plays that draw attention to their status as dramatic or theatrical texts. References to acting, consciousness of the presence of the audience, hints at the theatrical event, are just a few of the devices employed by drama in order to refer to itself. Topics of the course will be: the structure of Elizabethan theatres, issues of acting, different features of the performances, as well as the relations of metadrama to the Renaissance worldview.

Primary texts:
W. Shakespeare, Henry V (Suggested edition: New Cambridge, edited by A. Gurr)
Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet (suggested editions: Arden Shakespeare)

Secondary texts:

Two books among the following:
Abel, Lionel. Metatheatre: a New View of Dramatic Form. Hill and Wang, 1963
A. Righter, Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play, London, Chatto and Windus, 1962
J. Calderwood, Metadrama in Shakespeare’s Henriad: Richard II to Henry V, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1970
J. Calderwood, Shakespearean Metadrama: The Argument of the Play in Titus Andronicus, Loves Labour’s Lost, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Richard II, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1971
J. Calderwood, To Be or Not to Be: Negation and Metadrama in Hamlet, New York, Columbia University Press, 1983
S. Homan, When the Theater turns to Itself: The Aesthetic Metaphor in Shakespeare, Lewisburg, Bucknell University Press, 1981
R. Weimann, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater: Studies in the Social Dimension of Dramatic Form and Function. Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978

Students will have to sit an oral exam to prove they know both the primary and the secondary texts of the programme. They will also have to show they have acquired 1) a good knowledge of the cultural and historical contexts of the early modern period; 2) the capacity to use appropriate tools of textual analysis, and 3) the skill to make autonomous judgments on the texts analyzed. The exam will be in English.

15 two-hour classes, one per week. Supplementary material will be provided on line.

Italian

Students who cannot attend at least 2/3 of the classes are expected to study also the following texts:
J. DOLLIMORE and A. SINFIELD, "History and Ideology: the Instance of Henry V", in Alternative Shakespeare, ed. by J. Drakakis, London, Methuen 1985, pp. 206-227.
Mehl, Dieter, "Forms and Functions of the Play within a Play", in Renaissance Drama, vol. 8, 1965.
Styan, J. L., Drama, stage and audience, London, Cambridge University Press, 1975.

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