| Spring 2001
M 4:30-7:10 Krug Hall 5 |
Robert Matz
Office Hours: 1:00-2:30 and by appointment Office: Robinson A422 Email: rmatz@gmu.edu Office Ph. #: 993-1169 home page: http://mason.gmu.edu/~rmatz |
For Renaissance moralists, applying make-up ("painting") was a sin against
God's natural order; for many of these same moralists so were plays, since
in playing a part one altered one's very being. No wonder anti-cosmetic
rants so often appear in Renaissance drama, as in this quotation from Hamlet.
In this course, we will consider how the remarkably brilliant and self-conscious
Renaissance theater was energized by and played out anxieties about changes
in a supposedly "natural" order, not only in the content of the plays (frequently
satiric, dark and/or spectacularly violent) but also in their very form
as "made-up" works of human art. We'll consider the plays' treatment of
gender relations (note in the woodcut that there is no husband here; the
woman being made-up by the devil looks instead to her own face in the mirror,
while the woman in the foreground bears a rod, symbol of male social and
sexual authority). We'll consider too how anxieties about gender relate
to new forms of social mobility and political authority during the period,
which might also seem to upset a "natural" order. And finally, we'll consider
the theater itself as a place apart from the everyday, a place of fun,
holiday, riot or license, of "play" rather than rule.
Along with the plays, we'll read a number of essays from a recent anthology
of criticism that reinterprets Elizabethan and Jacobean drama under the
rubric "staging the Renaissance." We'll explore some of the common (or
divergent) qualities and assumptions of these reinterpretations, and the
ways in which "staging" in this anthology is seen as integral to "the Renaissance."
In doing so we'll become familiar with some of the historicist, feminist
and poststructuralist impulses that have shaped the reinterpretation of
the Renaissance stage and Renaissance culture over the past two decades.
Additionally we'll work throughout the semester on the process of writing
your final research paper.
Required Texts:
Staging the Renaissance (SR), ed. D.S. Kastan and P. Stallybrass
Ben Jonson, Five Plays, ed. G.A. Wilkes
Thomas Dekker, Shoemaker's Holiday, ed. Anthony Parr
William Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor (New Mermaids edition)
Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus and Other Plays, ed. Bevington
and Rasmussen
John Webster, Duchess of Malfi and Other Plays, ed. Rene Weis
Thomas Middleton, Five Plays, ed. Bryan Loughrey and Neil Taylor
Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedy of Miriam, ed. Ferguson and Waller
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Philaster (photocopy from
copy shop)
On-line readings available on the web version of this syllabus at my
home page: http://mason.gmu.edu/~rmatz (please print out)
Course requirements: Class participation, weekly reading responses,
a presentation, a close reading (5-7 pp.), a prospectus (1-2 pp.) an annotated
biliography and a final paper (15-20 pp.)
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Note: Schedule subject to change (I will give warning, however).
| Jan. 22 | Course introduction | Events and due dates |
| Jan. 29 | Jonson, Volpone; Steven Mullaney, "Civic Rites, City Sites: The Place of the Stage" (SR, 17-26); Peggy Knapp, "Ben Jonson and the Publicke Riot: Ben Jonson's Comedies" (SR, 164-80) | |
| Feb. 5 | Dekker, Shoemaker's Holiday; David Scott Kastan, "Workhouse and/as Playhouse: The Shoemaker's Holiday" (SR, 151-63) | |
| Feb. 12 | Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor; Jean E. Howard, "Women as Spectators Spectacles and Paying Customers" (SR, 68-74); and from Stephen Gosson, The Schoole of Abuse (online) and from Thomas Nashe, "Defense of Plays" (from his Pierce Penniless) (online) | Five-page close reading assigned |
| Feb. 19 | Jonson, Bartholomew Fair
Reading TBA |
|
| Feb. 26 | Marlowe, Doctor Faustus; Jonathan Dollimore, "Subversion Through Transgression: Doctor Faustus" (SR, 122-32) | Five-close reading due |
| Spring Break | ||
| March 12 | Marlowe, Edward II; Jonathan Goldberg, "Sodomy and Society: The Case of Christopher Marlowe" (SR, 75-82); | |
| March 19 | Webster, Duchess of Malfi; Peter Stallybrass, "Reading the Body and the Jacobean Theater of Consumption: The Revenger's Tragedy" (SR, 210-20); Frank Whigham, "Incest and Ideology: The Duchess of Malfi" (SR, 263-74) | 1 -2 page prospectus due |
| March 26 | No Class: conferences | |
| April 2 | Middleton, Women Beware Women; Jonathan V. Crewe, "The Theater of the Idols: Theatrical and Anti-Theatrical Discourse" (SR, 49-56) | Annotated bibliography due |
| April 9 | Cary, Tragedy of Miriam; Margaret W. Ferguson, "The Spectre of Resistance: The Tragedy of Miriam"(SR, 235-50) | |
| April 16 | Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster; Lisa Jardine, "Boy Actors, Female Roles, and Elizabethan Eroticism" (SR, 57-67) | |
| April 23 | Paper Exchange | Fifteen-page first version of paper due |
| April 30 | Overflow, recapitulation and wrap-up | Final paper due |
Some notes on course requirements (further details about paper assignments will be forthcoming):
--Reading notes should be about a page of informal ideas about the day's reading, either the texts or the criticism (or both). They should address thoughts you've had or questions you'd like raise about the reading. Your notes might be a listing of different ideas, or an extended treatment of one. These notes may be developed out of the marginalia you produced as you read (I suggest this approach). I will collect them but they need not be typed. I hope that, in addition to helping you prepare for class, these notes will become a mine for you while you're working on your papers.
--The presentation should provide the class with an account of a critical essay that discusses the day's play. The essay should be recent, dated at least later than the assigned critical essays for the day. You should pick the essay based on its interest and apparent importance (important for example because it provides a significantly different and compelling way of seeing the play than the one(s) in the assigned critical reading, or because it significantly develops that reading). In your presentation give both a synopsis of the argument, an account of why you picked this essay to present, and, if relevant, an account of the essay's relationship to the critical essays that were assigned for the day's class. The presentation should be no more than 10 minutes long.
--The first paper should be about five to seven pages and provide a close reading of some moment or a set of related moments in one of the plays. It is due on February 26.
--The 1-2 page prospectus should give a synopsis of the idea you want to explore in your final paper, as well as questions that remained to be answered, and/or speculation about further directions to develop the topic. The prospectus should be based on your close reading and the on-going work you are doing on the annotated bibliography. The 1-2 page prospectus is due March 19. The following week there will be no class. Instead, we will discuss your prospectus in scheduled conferences.
--The annotated bibliography will be a list of about 15 critical, historical, literary or theoretical sources relevant to the play that you are working on. They should also particularly focus on helping you develop ideas discussed in your close reading. Work on the prospectus and the annotated biliography overlap and, ideally, will mutually inform one another. The annotated bibliography is due on April 2.
--A 15-page first version of your term paper will be due in class on April 23. This class will be devoted to sharing work with other students. You are also invited to see me at my office with your first version of the paper.
--Following the paper workshop, you will have time further to develop and revise your work, based on the suggestions you have received from your peer reviewer, on your own interests or discussion with me. Final papers due in class on April 30.
--Students are expected to attend each session of class.
--Grades will be derived as follows:
| First paper: | 15 % |
| Participation = attendance, reading notes, class discussion, presentation, and prospectus, all weighted about equally | 25% |
| Annotated Bibliography: | 20% |
| Final paper: | 40% |