LENGL5256 Shakespeare: Seven Plays Course Descriptor

Course Overview

This course introduces students to seven plays by William Shakespeare. These will vary by year, but will always include a mix of the best-known, most canonical plays and the less familiar works: for example, plays studied may include The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, and The Tempest. Lectures will touch upon critical arguments about the plays and their shifting textual states but will focus upon a close and detailed analysis of what makes the plays work and how they achieve their particular and celebrated effects. Students will be introduced to the key critical terms necessary for the understanding of the plays of Shakespeare.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

Subject Specific Skills

Transferable and Employability Skills

Teaching and Learning

This course has a dedicated Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) page with a syllabus and range of additional resources (e.g. readings, question prompts, tasks, assignment briefs, discussion boards) to orientate and engage students in their studies. The scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course are:

Lectures/seminars 

40 scheduled hours – typically including induction, consolidation or revision, and assessment activity hours.

• Version 1:all sessions in the same sized group

OR 

• Version 2: most of the sessions in larger groups; some of the sessions in smaller groups

Faculty hold regular ‘office hours’, which are opportunities for students to drop in or sign up to explore ideas, raise questions, or seek targeted guidance or feedback, individually or in small groups. 

Students are to attend and participate in all the scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course and to manage their directed learning and independent study.

Indicative total learning hours for this course: 150 

Assessment

Both formative and summative assessment are used as part of this course, with purely formative opportunities typically embedded within interactive teaching sessions, office hours, and/or the VLE. 

Summative Assessments

Further information about the assessments can be found in the Course Syllabus.

Feedback

Students will receive formative and summative feedback in a variety of ways, written (e.g. marked up on assignments, through email or the VLE) or oral (e.g. as part of interactive teaching sessions or in office hours). 

Indicative Reading

Note: Comprehensive and current reading lists are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative reading list provided below is for a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Hamlet
• Franco Moretti, “Network Theory, Plot Analysis” (Stanford Literary Lab, 2011)
• Emma Smith, This Is Shakespeare (2019)
• Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (1957)
• Park Honan, Shakespeare: A Life (1998)

Indicative Topics

Note: Comprehensive and current reading lists are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative reading list provided below is for a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• Tragedy vs. comedy
• Shakespeare and the environment
• Shakespeare and race
• Shakespeare and gender
• Dramatic structure, including act breaks, scene breaks, and line breaks
• The textual state of Shakespeare’s plays, including Quartos, Folios, and modern editorial apparatus