ENGL 107(F) Shakespearean Greenworld Comedy+
Comedy is often misunderstood: many simply equate it with funniness, and wrongly assume that if we are laughing, we cannot be thinking. In this course we will try to balance exuberance and seriousness in exploring an elegant form, "greenworld" comedy, which refers to the realm of nature, imagination, intoxication, sex, and/or magic to which its protagonists flee from the repression and injustice of an everyday world of cynical power. Greenworld comedy invites reflection on healing the ills of society, on passion and love, and on the relationship between practical realities and the powers of imagination. Our principal texts will be comedies of Shakespeare, often regarded as the epitome of the genre, which are dominated by female protagonists of great charisma and finesse. We will also study excerpts from Cervantes' Don Quixote, and will attend more briefly to early writers who shaped greenworld comedy (such as Aristophanes, Chaucer, and Rabelais) and to modern examples of the genre (for example, plays by Oscar Wilde and John Synge, or films such as Bringing Up Baby [1938] and Life Is Beautiful [1998]). Class discussions will emphasize techniques of close reading, attending particularly to analyzing poetic devices.
Requirements: active class participation, frequent writing exercises, and several short papers totaling about 15-20 pages. No prerequisites. Enrollment limited to 19. Two sections.