Duration
30h Th
Number of credits
Lecturer
Language(s) of instruction
English language
Organisation and examination
Teaching in the first semester, review in January
Schedule
Units courses prerequisite and corequisite
Prerequisite or corequisite units are presented within each program
Learning unit contents
SHAKESPEARE AND THE USES OF COMEDY
We will study four classic Shakespeare plays individually and comparatively, examining how each of them relates to its historical context and the contemporary audience.
Learning outcomes of the learning unit
Close textual study of the plays will be a springboard for considerations of issues connected with performance and adaptation, social, psychological and sexual orientations, problems of power and authority, the physical and metaphysical dimensions of man and woman, definitions of the comic and tragic, and how all of this relates to the various uses of comic principles and techniques (transformation, the grotesque, social manipulation, the carnivalesque, rhetorical exaggeration and nonsense, satire, verbal wit and parody, the sexual burlesque, comic relief, misunderstandings, ...). Our discussions will be leavened by video recordings and other supporting materials.
Prerequisite knowledge and skills
Planned learning activities and teaching methods
Mode of delivery (face to face, distance learning, hybrid learning)
Recommended or required readings
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Merchant of Venice
Michel Delville and Pierre Michel, Hamlet & Co
Exam(s) in session
Any session
- In-person
written exam
Additional information:
examen écrit