ENGL 5358 Shakespearean Literature
SHAKESPEAREAN LITERATURE
This course is an introduction to the academic study of the literature of William Shakespeare, one of the most significant literary ancestors of the English language. One of the reasons this literature has so deeply engrained itself into literary culture around the world is the breadth of Shakespeare’s canon. Not only did Shakespeare’s poetry help define the poetic mode of an era, but his plays ushered in a new paradigm for creating dramatic work. This paradigm placed the “individual” at the center of the action, as opposed to plays that privileged moral or religious teaching. When we reiterate the late scholar Harold Bloom’s assertion that Shakespeare was involved in “the invention of the human,” what we mean is that Shakespeare helped English-speaking culture begin to see humans as worthy subject matter for dramatic spectacle and profound storytelling. This course will allow learners to become adept navigators of Shakespeare’s body of work, and who can likewise investigate and articulate the evidence for the profound humanness we find in the Bard’s literature.