1
Fall 2010
English 219.3
SHAKESPEARE’S PASTS
Hamlet and the Ghost (1789)
Henry Fuseli
Engraved by R. Thew
TuTh, 8:00-9:15, Friends 301
Course Instructor: Dan Breen
Office: Muller 302
Phone: 274-1014
Office Hours: Tues. 11-12; Thurs. 11-12; Fri. 9-11 and by appointment
Email:
Course Texts:
Stephen Greenblatt, et. al., ed., The Norton Shakespeare, 2nd edition (W. W. Norton and Company, 2008).
Supplementary readings will be handed out in class.
Aims and Goals:
Buried deep within Shakespeare’s writing is a gnawing anxiety about the place of the past within the present. Critics have written about this most frequently of course with respect to the history plays, and certainly the first and second tetralogies can be understood as a comprehensive if fitful dramatic attempt to wrestle with the political and cultural legacies in Elizabethan England of the Wars of the Roses. But Shakespeare is not concerned only with national histories; the past exists in a variety of forms in his writing as a source of constant emotional and intellectual preoccupation. The speaker of the sonnets “summon[s] up remembrance of things past”; Antony hopefully proclaims “Things that are past are done with me” in Antony and Cleopatra; and when Hamlet confronts the ghost of his father we as readers or audience members are presented with multiple pasts in a single moment: Hamlet’s recent familial history; Danish political history; and England’s own religious reformation, still in living memory in 1599. This course will explore in a variety of different critical contexts the significance of Shakespeare’s interest in staging various pasts. We will examine the plays and poems in terms of their concern with political, religious, intellectual, and sexual pasts, and at the beginning of the course we will also consider our own interest in Shakespeare as part of the phenomenon around which the course itself is structured. Why do we in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries continue to turn to Shakespeare as a fragment of our cultural past?
Requirements:
Your written work will consist of two major essays (4-5 pages) and a short analytical exercise (2-3 pages). It is important to understand that each of these assignments is required in order to receive credit for the course.
Essay Policies:
1) Revisions
You may revise one major essay for full credit (ie, the grade on your
revision would replace the grade on your initial version). The short analytical exercise is meant essentially to be diagnostic and is therefore ineligible for revision.
2) Due Dates
Essays are due in class on the date stipulated below in the Class Schedule.
You may request a one-week extension in advance of the essay’s due date; however, essays for which extensions are granted may not be revised.
3) Plagiarism and academic misconduct
Plagiarism is the condition in which someone else’s work appears in your own with
inappropriate documentation. It is a very serious form of academic misconduct. Examples of plagiarism include but are not limited to:
--Quoting directly from another source without attribution OR without
using quotation marks
--Paraphrasing from another source with no in-text attribution, even if
you’ve listed the source on your Works Cited page
--Handing in an essay that was written either partially or entirely by
someone else
--Comparing responses to exam questions during the exam itself
Any incident of academic misconduct will result in expulsion from the course and
immediate referral to the Office of Judicial Affairs. For information on the
College policies on academic misconduct and plagiarism, please see the Ithaca College Student Policy Manual, sections 7.1.2.6. and 7.1.4.1. Volume 7 of the Policy Manual is
available online at
Class Participation:
Class participation will also be an important part of your grade; the course is, after
all, designed as a seminar. Most of the important work we do will develop as a
result of our conversations, and it is essential therefore that each of us comes to class having read the assigned material carefully, and prepared to participate in thoughtful discussion.
It is also important to recognize, however, that not everyone feels comfortable
taking part in analytical discussions. In this course, then, there are three ways
in which students can improve their class participation grades:
1. By participating in the analytical discussions we have each class
This includes:
--Asking questions about the material
--Offering a reading of a passage, or making a larger
analytical point
--Responding to comments made by others
2. By volunteering to read passages aloud
Many of our discussions will focus on specific passages that
are crucial to some aspect of the development of the play. We
will always begin these discussions by reading these passages
aloud. Students who volunteer to read these passages will
earn credit toward their class participation grades.
3. By performing well on in-class quizzes
We will have approximately six in-class quizzes this semester
(roughly one every other week).
In addition, there are certain basic standards to which students must adhere in
order to maximize their class participation grades. Students must attend class
regularly (see the attendance policy below for clarification), must observe basic standards of classroom decorum, and must bring to every class a text of the essay, poem, or play we’ll be studying. Students who do not bring a text will be considered to be
unprepared for class.
Midterm and Final Grades:
Your midterm grade will be calculated according to the following percentages:
Midterm exam: 40%
First major essay: 30%
Class participation: 20%
Short analytical exercise: 10%
Your final course grade will be calculated according to the following percentages:
Midterm and final exams: 40%
Major essays: 30%
Class participation: 20%
Short analytical exercise: 10%
Attendance Policy:
You are allowed four absences, no questions asked—use them carefully. Beginning with the fifth, however, your final course gradewill drop one full letter grade for each additional absence (eg, from B+ to C+, or A to B). Students who miss eight classes before the withdrawal deadline (Friday, November 5) will be automatically dropped from the course. Students whose accumulated absences total eight or more before the end of the semester will not pass the course. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. If you are seriously ill or need to attend to a personal emergency, you obviously won’t be penalized.
Class Schedule
August:
Thurs. 26—Course Introduction
Tues. 31—Introduction to Shakespeare
September:
Thurs. 2—Why Read Shakespeare?
Gates, “Dead White Male of the Year”; Woolf, excerpts from “The Strange
Elizabethans” and “Notes on an Elizabethan Play”; Shapiro, excerpts from
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? (photocopy)
Tues. 7—Why Read Shakespeare?
Gates, Woolf, and Shapiro excerpts
Thurs. 9—Essay Class
Tues. 14—Shakespeare, sonnets 30, 73
Thurs. 16—Shakespeare, sonnets 65, 81
***Short analytical exercise due***
Tues. 21—Shakespeare, Richard II, Acts I-II
Thurs. 23—Shakespeare, Richard II, Acts III-IV
Tues. 28—Shakespeare, Richard II, Acts IV-V
Thurs. 30—Shakespeare, Henry V, Acts I-II
***First major essay due***
October:
Tues. 5—Shakespeare, Henry V, Acts III-IV
Thurs. 7—Shakespeare, Henry V, Acts IV-V
Tues. 12—***MIDTERM EXAM***
Thurs. 14—FALL BREAK
Tues. 19—Shakespeare, Hamlet, Acts I-II
Thurs. 21—Shakespeare, Hamlet, Acts II-III
Tues. 26—Shakespeare, Hamlet, Acts III-IV
Thurs. 28—Shakespeare, Hamlet, Acts IV-V
November:
Tues. 2—Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Acts I-II
Thurs. 4—Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Acts III-IV
Tues. 9—Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Acts IV-V
Thurs. 11—Shakespeare, Pericles, Acts I-II
***Second major essay due***
Tues. 16—Shakespeare, Pericles, Acts III-IV
Thurs. 18—Shakespeare, Pericles, Acts IV-V
Tues. 23—THANKSGIVING BREAK
Thurs. 25—THANKSGIVING BREAK
Tues. 30—Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Acts I-II
December:
Thurs. 2—Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Acts III-IV
Tues. 7—Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Acts IV-V
Thurs. 9—Loose ends, etc.
***The FINAL EXAM for this class is scheduled for Tuesday, December 14, from 7:30-10:00 am, in Friends 301***