Shakespeare’s Tragedies will offer a powerful and pleasurable encounter with our most valued writer: Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s Tragedies will offer students the opportunity to read texts from across the whole span of Shakespeare’s writing career, and will not be limited to those printed in the First Folio as ‘Tragedies’.
While what is tragic in Shakespeare, and what is Shakespearean in tragedy, will both be questions at issue, as will the complicated early modern and more recent genealogies of tragedy, students are not bound in their understanding and assessment to view the works we will study through the generic lens of tragedy only. The module is founded on the close reading and experience of the plays as deeply multi-vocal, multi-dimensional texts for reading and performance, and on the myriad opportunities for exploring and analysing them as such. The module seeks, above all, to equip students to think about and enjoy some of Shakespeare’s most enduring plays and poems for themselves.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module students should be able to:
explore and analyse Shakespeare’s writing both as text and as performance.
apply notions of genre, form, content and style to Shakespeare’s writing.
evaluate and apply relevant critical and theoretical approaches to Shakespeare’s writing.
present sustained and persuasive written arguments cogently and coherently.