Course for international guest/part time students
- Faculty
- Faculty of Humanities
- Organization
- BTK Department of English Studies
- Code
- BMI-ANGD17-CI3aE.300
- Title
- Renaissance Drama - Foundations and Perspectives: Shakespearean Plays and Early Modern Popular Culture
- Usual semester
- Autumn
- Published semester
- 2026/27/1
- ECTS
- 3
- Language
- en
- Learning outcomes
- The course offers analyses of Shakespearean plays and other early modern primary sources (ballads, popular quartos, emblem books, etc.) with a strong focus on questions of cultural history, iconography and literature, supported by the discussion of relevant academic articles and book chapters. The aim of the course is to provide students with a general overview of issues related to popular culture in early modern England, through the close reading of literary and non-literary texts and cultural products, thus enhancing their understanding of the Shakespearean text and age as well. Students are also helped and required to work on their research skills, making them capable of conducting independent research in the field. Knowledge Students will acquire comprehensive knowledge of the major trends, thematic directions, and dominant features of early modern popular culture, as well as learning about the spectrum of contemporaries’ attitudes to it. They will be acquainted with the constant traffic between elite and popular cultural forms in England in the late 16th and early 17th centures, studying the contexts of public theatre, cheap print, visual culture, country and urban festivals and rites. In addition, they learn how to conduct scholarly research in this field by familiarising themselves with relevant databases. Skills Students will develop the ability to conduct interdisciplinary investigations as related to Shakespearean drama and other early modern non-literary cultural products. They will be able to realize how different approaches (close reading, cultural historical and philological research, iconographical interpretation) complete each other. This way they will be able to contextualize canonical works and present their findings and interpretations orally and in academic writing. Attitude The course fosters cultural sensitivity, openness, and reflective critical thinking in relation to canonical (Shakespeare) and non-canonical cultural products. Students will develop an awareness of the significance of cultural historical contexts when analysing literary works, as well as of the social embeddedness of literature. Autonomy and Responsibility Students will take responsibility for the academic grounding of their interpretations and will be able to formulate independent positions on contested issues. They will critically reflect on the relation between elite and popular culture, as well as the forms and significance of popular culture literary canons. They will be made aware of and take responsibility for their own investigative position.
- Course content
- The course offers detailed analyses of Shakespearean plays, combined with mapping out contemporary cultural phenomena and discourses appearing in them, with a special emphasis on how Shakespeare uses and “translates” these popular discourses into his plays, suiting them to his dramaturgical purposes. The full list of the topics and plays potentially covered by this course is as follows, however, at the beginning of each term the exact content of the course is defined according to the students’ interest. Topics may include: carnival (Hamlet, Henry IV, King Lear), shrew-taming discourses (The Taming of the Shrew, The Winter’s Tale), fairies and sprites, popular rituals (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), witchcraft (Macbeth), usury (The Merchant of Venice), ballads (The Winter’s Tale, Titus Andronicus, Othello), skimmington and rough riding, the “Moor” (Titus Andronicus, Othello), fools and clowns (King Lear, Twelfth Night). The list of quartos, pamphlets and ballads is adjusted to the specific content in the given term, since the relevant corpus is huge.
- Assessment method
- Reading of set texts is essential, as well as contribution to class discussion. Short presentations on specific texts, databases, or summaries of an academic article. Final essay (cca. 3,000-4,000 words, including footnotes and bibliography) based on original research conducted during the semester, defended in front of the seminar group orally during the last classes.
- Bibliography
- a) compulsory Mikhail Bakhtin: Rabelais and His World. Transl. Iswolsky, Helen. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984 (1968), (részletek/excerpts) Peter Burke: Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. Aldershot, Ashgate Publishing, 2009. (részletek/excerpts) Stuart Gillespie–Neil Rhodes: Shakespeare and Elizabethan Popular Culture: Arden Critical Companion. London: Cengage Learning, 2006. (részletek/excerpts) Martin Ingram: ”Ridings, rough music, and the reform of ’popular culture’ in early modern England. Past & Present, No. 105 (Nov., 1984), pp. 79-113. Francois Laroque: Shakespeare’s Festive World: Elizabethan Seasonal Entertainment and the Professional Stage. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993. (részletek/excerpts) Mary Ellen Lamb: The Popular Culture of Shakespeare, Spenser and Jonson. London-New York, Routledge, 2006. (részletek/excerpts) Anu Korhonen, “The Witch in the Alehouse Imaginary Encounters in Cultural History” in J. Kusber, M. Dreyer, J. Rogge, A. Hütig, eds. Historische Kulturwissenschaften. Poistionen, Praktiken und Perspektive. (Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, 2010) pp. 181-205 Bruce R. Smith: „Shakespeare’s Residuals: The Circulation of Ballads in Cultural Memory” in Shakespeare and Elizabethan Popular Culture. Eds. S. Gillespie and Vincent Rhodes. (London, Cengage Learning, 2006) pp. 193-218. Tiffany Stern: Ballad Business. Selling Early Modern Theatre. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2026. (részletek/excerpts) A félév során a kurzusleírásban megadott, arra a félévre kiválasztott Shakespeare-drámák és a következő nem-irodalmi szövegek közül a hozzájuk kapcsolódó korabeli anyagok: Anon. Hic-Mulier; Haec-Vir. London, 1620, (részletek/excerpts) Anon. Here Begynneth a Merry Jest of a Shrewd and Curste Wyfe, Lapped in Morelles Skin, for Her Good Behavyor, 1555 Anon. Newes from Scotland: declaring the damnable Life and Death of Doctor Fian, a notable Sorcerer, who was burned at Edenbrough Januarie the last, London, 1591. Ballads from the web database: English Broadside Ballad Archive (http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu) Nicholas Breton: Pasquil’s Mistress (verse pamphlet), (részletek/excerpts) John Green: Pandosto, or the Triumph of Time (romance, 1588, 1607), (részletek/excerpts) Henry Goodcole: The wonderful discovery of Elizabeth Sawyer, a Witch, late of Edmonton, her conviction and condemnation and death. London, 1621 Henry Peacham: Minerva Britanna (emblem book, 1608), (részletek/excerpts) William Shakespeare: Hamlet, Henry IV, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew, The Winter’s Tale, Titus Andronicus, Twelfth Night Reginald Scot: The Discovery of Witchcraft, London, 1584, (részletek/excerpts) Philip Stubbes: The Anatomie of Abuses, London, 1583, (részletek/excerpts) John Taylor: Divers crabtree lectures, London, 1638, (részletek/excerpts) Thomas Welkes: Ayeres or Phantasticke Spirites (songbook, 1608), (részletek/excerpts) Geoffrey Whitney: A Choice of Emblems (emblem book, 1586), (részletek/excerpts) George Wither: Abuses Stript and Whipped (verse satire, 1614), (részletek/excerpts) George Wither: A Collection of Emblems (emblem book,1635), (részletek/excerpts) b) recommended readings Mikhail Bakhtin: Rabelais and His World. Transl. Iswolsky, Helen. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984 (1968), (részletek/excerpts) Peter Burke: Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. Aldershot, Ashgate Publishing, 2009. (részletek/excerpts) David Cressy: ”Levels of Illiteracy in England, 1530-1730” In Society and Culture in Early Modern England. Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003 Helen Cooper: The English Romance in Time. Oxford, OUP, 2004 Adam Fox: Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500-1700. Oxford, Clarendon, 2000 Hugh Grady: „Falstaff: Subjectivity between the Carnival and the Aesthetic” The Modern Language Review, Vol. 96, No. 3 (Jul., 2001), pp. 609-623 Ronald Hutton: The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400-1700. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Tiffany Stern, Documents of Performance in Early Modern England, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009.