The Prince

E-text of Machiavelli's The Prince: required reading for the Shakespeare course. Now don't start getting ideas about taking over the world.

Recap: Weeks 1 & 2

Comedy: Dicussions of Old Comedy, Middle Comedy and New Comedy. Attic Comedy and its origins. The Dionysia festivals. Structural elements of Comedy. Aristophanes' contribution to Greek Comedy. Frogs - begun.

Detailed Study of a Shakespearean Play: Stage history of Macbeth.

Novel and Modernity: The prevailing social, intellectual and moral climate that allowed the birth of the Novel. The novel as an embodiment of "transcendental homelessness" (George Lukacs). Robinson Crusoe as an absolutist fantasy. Internalisation in the novel (with ref. to and distinguishing between Richardson and Sterne, in addition to Defoe). Persuasion: Publication history. Austen's Romantic nostalgia for a near-extinct social mode of existence in Persuasion.

Modernism: General distinctive features of Modernism. Modernism's fallout - Post-Modernism and its complicated lineage. Modernist Drama: Death of a Salesman. DoaS as a formally innovative work, a social commentary, a Marxist text (?).

PS: I'm going to try and post on these individual issues. Might not be possible to post on each - so let me know which ones you need the most.