Course for international guest/part time students
- Faculty
- Faculty of Humanities
- Organization
- BTK Department of English Studies
- Code
- BBI-ANG22-227E.15
- Title
- Reading Literary Texts: Macbeth on page and screen (Play-text and screenplays)
- Usual semester
- Both
- ECTS
- 3
- Language
- en
- Learning outcomes
- A) Knowledge The course is designed to familiarize students with various film adaptations of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and to help students acquire interpretative strategies concerning both print and non-print (media) texts, more specifically, Macbeth on page (play-text and filmscripts) and on screen. B) Skills Participants are expected to produce a short clip, either individually or collaboratively with other group members, focusing on a scene of the play. In the event of technical difficulties, the alternative task is to write a shooting script individually. Students who complete this course will be able to critically evaluate cinematic interpretations of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. As a further learning outcome, students will gain the ability to apply abstract concepts from literary theory, performance studies, adaptation studies, and film criticism to practical questions concerning adaptation, audience reception, and the politics of representation in Shakespearean film. This includes examining how themes such as power, gender, race, and identity are reshaped in various cinematic contexts. Students will also develop skills in using Artificial Intelligence tools to support their analytical work. These tools will be employed to summarize, compare, and synthesize large bodies of textual and audiovisual material, including screenplays, criticism, and performance reviews. AI-assisted methods will be demonstrated during seminars and encouraged—at times required—for preparing course assignments. These demonstrations will include explanations of how Large Language Models and image generator apps function, along with critical discussions of their limitations. Students will be cautioned against uncritical reliance on AI tools, especially in interpretive tasks of complex literary works like those of Shakespeare and film adaptations. C) Attitudes Above all, students will be taught to appreciate sharply different points of view in philosophical, historical, moral, artistic and educational contexts; to be able to critique them while respecting their integrity; to learn that a tolerant attitude means (should mean) inclusiveness, not exclusiveness. D) Autonomy and responsibility The seminars do not intend to impose political, moral or artistic value judgements of the subject matter on the students. They are invited to formulate their own views and interpretations, appreciations of the topics discussed. The lecturer will function as moderator for in-class discussions, asking students to comment on controversial aspects of a given topic thus allowing independent views to be expressed in class.
- Course content
- The following syllabus outlines the content of the course. Topics to be covered (with recommended readings): I. Introduction: What is adaptation? Why adapt? What to adapt? basic modes of adaptations Introduction A Brief Look at Adaptation Studies. In Shakespeare Films A Re-evaluation of 100 Years of Adaptations Peter E.S. Babiak McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, 2016. Introduction: Shakespeare, The Movie. Lynda E. Boose and Richard Burt in Shakespeare, The Movie Popularizing the plays on film, TV, and video. Edited By Lynda E.Boose Richard Burt London and New York, 2005. Introduction: Shakespeare, films and the marketplace. Russell Jackson in ThE Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film. Second Edition. Edited By Russell Jackson Cup, 2007. Géza Kállay, Introduction: Being Film in Film & Culture https://edit.elte.hu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10831/30209/FSA.Film%20and%20Culture.Angol-Amerikai%20Int%C3%A9zet.pdf II. Macbeth on film Macbeth. Directed by Orson Welles, Republic Pictures, 1948. Throne of Blood. Directed by Akira Kurosawa, 1957. Macbeth. Directed by Roman Polanski, Caliban Films and Playboy Productions, 1971. Macbeth. Directed by Trevor Nunn, 1979. Macbeth. Directed by Rupert Goold, BBC/Illuminations, 2010. Macbeth. Directed by Justin Kurzel, See-Saw Films, 2015. The Tragedy of Macbeth. Directed by Joel Coen, A24, Apple Tv+, 2021. Macbeth. Directed by Max Webster, 2023. (filmed version director: Tim Van Someren) III. Interpretations See reading list further below
- Assessment method
- The course requires a creative project to be submitted and presented during the semester. The guidelines for the preparation for the project are provided at the beginning of the course and are being discussed throughout the term. These guidelines contain the precise details of the manner and conditions of the recommended use of Artificial Intelligence in preparing for the chosen project (either short film or filmscript). Students are also asked to write an in-class test at the end of the term and to deliver a short interactive presentation during the term in a subject of their choice, selected from the topics advertised in the syllabus. They receive credit for their efforts which will be reflected in their final grade.
- Bibliography
- Reading List and Audiovisual Material Shakespeare: Macbeth Zvika Serper, The Bloodied Sacred Pine Tree: A Dialectical Depiction of Death in Kurosawa’s Throne Of Blood And Ran, Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Summer 2000), pp. 13-27, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20688326 Henry Somers-Hall, Throne of Blood and the Metaphysics of Tragedy, Film-Philosophy 17.1 (2013) https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdf/10.3366/film.2013.0004 Susan McCloskey, Shakespeare, Orson Welles, And the "Voodoo" Macbeth. Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Winter, 1985), pp. 406-416 Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George WashingtonUniversity Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2870304 David I. Grossvogel, When the Stain Won't Wash: Polanski's Macbeth, Diacritics, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Summer, 1972), pp. 46-51 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/464670 Michael Mullin, Stage and Screen: The Trevor Nunn "Macbeth", Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 350-359 Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George WashingtonUniversity Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2870509 Orson Welles’s MACBETH in: Filming Shakespeare's Plays. The Adaptations of Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Peter Brook and Akira Kurosawa. Anthony Davies. CAMBRIDGE University Press 1988. William C. Carroll, Adapting “Macbeth”: A Cultural History, The Arden Shakespeare (London: Bloomsbury, 2022). William C. Carroll, “Fleance in the Final Scene of Macbeth: The Return of the Repressed”, in Sarah Hatchuel et al., eds., Shakespeare on Screen: “Macbeth” (Mont-Saint-Aignan: P.U. de Rouen et du Havre, 2013), 261-278, and “Politics, Adaptation, Macbeth” in Diana E. Henderson and Stephen O’Neill, eds., The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Adaptation, The Arden Shakespeare (London: Bloomsbury, 2022), 81-99. Victoria Bladen, “Performing the Child Motif in Kurzel’s Macbeth (2015)”, Anglistik, 28.2 (September 2017), 136). Agnieszka Rasmus, “What bloody film is this? "Macbeth" for our time”, University of Łódź, Poland, DOI: https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.18.08 Carol Chillington Rutter, “Remind Me: How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?”, Shakespeare Survey, 57 (2004), 52. Artur Skweres, “Upsetting the Body Politic(s): Witches as Enemy Agents in Rupert Goold’s Macbeth (2010)”, RANAM: Recherches anglaises et nord-américaines, 49 (2016), 173-188, 185, doi.org/10.3406/ranam.2016.1536). Víctor Huertas-Martín, “Rupert Goold’s Macbeth (2010): Surveillance Society and Society of Control”, SEDERI: Yearbook of the Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies, 27 (2017), 81-103, 93n Víctor Huertas-Martín, “Katabasis in Rupert Goold’s Macbeth (BBC, 2010): Threshold-Crossing, Education, Shipwreck, Visionary, and Trial Katabatic Experiences”, Literature/Film Quarterly, 46.3 (2018). Víctor Huertas-Martín, “Off-Modern Hybridity in TV Theatre: Theatrical, Cinematic and Media Temporalities in Rupert Goold’s Macbeth (BBC-Illuminations Media, 2010)”, International Journal of Transmedia Literacy (IJTL), 5 (2019), 81-101, 97. Susan L. Fischer, “Macbeth Apropos to Rupert Goold’s and Gregory Doran’s Stagecraft: Equivocation, Violence, and Vulnerability”, Cahiers Élisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies, 107.1 (2022), 39-62, 40, doi.org/10.1177/01847678211062926. Márta Hargitai, “Chronotopes of Hell in Two Film Adaptations of Macbeth”, The AnaChronisT, The Reel Eye, 21.1 (2023), 19-33, doi.org/10.53720/PTMK2462. Márta Hargitai, “Fleance and Obscured Scottish Futures in Screen Adaptations of Macbeth by Goold, Kurzel and Coen”, at http://www.serena.unina.it/index.php/anglistica-aion/issue/view/788/762 Márta Hargitai, “Fate Hid in an Auger Hole”: Confined Space as Representation of Evil in Macbeth”, In Myth, Image, Narrative. L'Harmattan 2024 Gemma Miller, “‘He has no children’: Changing Representations of the Child in Stage and Film Productions of Macbeth from Polanski to Kurzel”, Shakespeare, 13.1 (2017), 52-66, doi.org/10.1080/17450918.2016.1174728; Edel Semple, “‘Seeds of Time’: Women, Children, and the Nation in Kurzel’s Macbeth (2015)”, Shakespeare Bulletin, 38.4 (2020), 615-633; Hanh Bui, “Effigies of Childhood in Kurzel’s Macbeth”, Literature/Film Quarterly, 48.1 (2020), lfq.salisbury.edu. Stephen Prince, “Throne of Blood: Shakespeare Transposed”, The Criterion Collection: Film Guides (2014), www.criterion.com. Douglas Lanier, “Shakespearean Rhizomatics: Adaptation, Ethics, Value”, in Alexa Huang and Elizabeth Rivlin, eds., Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) Kliman, Bernice W. Macbeth: Shakespeare in Performance. 2nd ed. Manchester: Manchester University press, 2004. Marker, Jeff W. “Orson Welles’s Macbeth: Allegory of Anticommunism.” Literature/Film Quarterly 41.2 (2013): 116–128. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43798941 Rippy, Marguerite H. “Orson Welles.” In Welles, Kozintsev, Kurosawa, Zeffirelli. Great Shakespeareans, Volume XVII. Eds.Mark thornton Burnett, Courtney lehmann, Marguerite H. Rippy, and Ramona Wray. london: Bloomsbury, 2013. 7–53.https://doi.org/10.5040/9781472555564-ch001 Weyward Macbeth. Intersections of Race and Performance (eds. Scott L. Newstok and Ayanna Thompson, 2010) Colorblind Shakespeare: new perspectives on race and performance (Routledge 2006). ed. Ania Loomba Robin Headlam Wells, Shakespeare on Masculinity. Cambridge University Press, 2015, Violent Masculinities: Male Aggression in Early Modern Texts and Culture. Jennifer Feather and Catherine E. Thomas, eds. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013 Jennifer Vaught, Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English Literature. Women and gender in the Early Modern World (Routledge: London, 2008, 2016) Maria L. Howell (2008), Manhood and Masculine Identity in William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth. Films: Macbeth. Directed by Orson Welles, Republic Pictures, 1948. Throne of Blood. Directed by Akira Kurosawa, 1957. Macbeth. Directed by Roman Polanski, Caliban Films and Playboy Productions, 1971. Macbeth. Directed by Trevor Nunn, 1979. Macbeth. Directed by Rupert Goold, BBC/Illuminations, 2010. Macbeth. Directed by Justin Kurzel, See-Saw Films, 2015. The Tragedy of Macbeth. Directed by Joel Coen, A24, Apple Tv+, 2021. Macbeth. Directed by Max Webster, 2023. (filmed version director: Tim Van Someren) Filmscripts: 1, Voodoo Macbeth by Orson Welles: https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/public/music/musflrpd-07020004/musflrpd-07020004.pdf 2, Kurzel 2015: Todd Louiso, Jacob Koskoff, Michael Lesslie https://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/MACBETH_SCRIPT_wCover_R31.pdf 3, Coen, Joel: Macbeth. Screenplay, https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/The-Tragedy-Of-Macbeth-Read-The-Screenplay-1.pdf. 2020. 4, Macbeth (Donmar Warehouse edition) by William Shakespeare series NHB Classic Plays, 2023, dir. Max Webster