Erste Sitzung: 19. April 2016
Die Anmeldung findet im Rahmen des allgemeinen Verfahrens der Fachrichtung 4.3 statt. Bitte beachten Sie die Mitteilungen auf der Website der Fachrichtung und die Aushänge.
In this seminar, we will study two tragedies by William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus (c. 1592) and Macbeth (1606). In these plays, blood flows profusely and as the action proceeds, bodies will be hacked to pieces and the stage will be strewn with corpses – in brief, we will encounter “Shakespeare at his bloodiest,” as one critic puts it.
However, it would be reductive to read these plays as mere representations of lurid violence revelling in gruesome spectacle. Both texts are fascinating examples of Shakespeare’s stagecraft and skill at writing plays for the popular theatre and to the delight of an entertainment-hungry early modern audience.
We will read and closely analyse the texts to explore, amongst others, questions of ambition and revenge, good and bad king- and queenship, witchcraft and the supernatural, all of which are raised in the course of the action. Moreover, we will examine how these issues are informed by early modern concepts such as gender and race. Finally, we will watch and discuss two film versions - Julie Taymor’s Titus (1999) and Justin Kurzel’s very recent Macbeth (2015) – to see how these plays have been adapted for a contemporary audience.
Texts (please buy no others than the editions below):
Shakespeare, William. Titus Andronicus. Ed. Alan Hughes. Updated edition. Cambridge: CUP, 2006. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. ISBN: 978-0521673822
---. Macbeth. Ed. Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. The Arden Shakespeare. ISBN: 978-1904271413 |
