ENGL 392 - Topics in Literature in English before 1700

Credits: 3 in fall or winter, 4 in spring

Prerequisite: Take one English course between 201 and 295, and one between 222 and 299. Enrollment limited. A seminar course on literature written in English before 1700 with special emphasis on research and discussion. Student suggestions for topics are welcome. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Spring 2019, ENGL 392-01: Topic: English Literature beforen 1700: Othello and Ourselves: Race, Religion, and Reconciliation in Shakespeare (4). Race, religion, sexualized violence: Othello is a play that poses timely and difficult questions for our own age. This course examines one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies in detail, studying its sources, historical context, textual history, performance history, and film adaptations. Subsequently, special attention is given to the play’s literary and cultural legacy to see ways the play has been both cited and revised to comment on our modern situation. We consider one of Shakespeare’s late plays, The Winter’s Tale, as one of the early “revisions” of Shakespeare’s Othello and see the play at the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton. Students taking the course for 300-level credit complete a digital-humanities project on the textual variants between the two earliest editions of the play. (HL) Pickett.