Course info

This module provides a focussed encounter with Shakespeare's four great tragedies: Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth and Othello. It offers the opportunity for close reading of texts which have consistently been posed against each other, as well as in relation to Shakespeare's complete oeuvre. The course will interrogate the degree to which these plays are indeed 'tragedies', and the usefulness of this generic category for understanding the plays. Each text will be approached in terms of a context or an idea or an issue which has orientated recent critical discussion of that particular play. The module will also seek to introduce students to some of the defining critical discussions of these plays, both singly and as a group. Throughout an effort will be made to read texts historically as well as in terms of their enduring and/or present significance.

Module Supervisor's Resarch into Subject Area

"King Lear and the Scene of Cartography" in, Bernhard Klein & Andrew Gordon, eds., " Literature, Mapping & The Politics of Space in Early Modern Britain", Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2001, pp.109-37.

"Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference", Cambridge Studies "In Renaissance Literature And Culture", 4 Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1994, Chapter 4, "The Exotic in Shakespeare", pp.102 -112 112 -122; 137-140

"The presence of original sin in Hamlet", Shakespeare Quarterly, forthcoming, 2013