ENGL 311(S) Studies in Shakespeare: Problem Plays and Problem Poems (Same as Theatre 317)
What makes romantic/erotic love at once empowering and compromising, irresistible and hurtful? How can poets, lyric and dramatic audiences, and lovers distinguish truth from falsehood; physical and lyrical beauty from moral and verbal corruption? How do the drama of the sonnets, the poetry of the plays, the multiple narrators of "A Lover's Complaint," the personal desires and professional aspirations of Shakespeare, comment upon and help to explain each other? This course explores the psychic perils, moral quandaries, and interpretive problems that Shakespeare experiences, stages, and continues to revisit-in the multiplicities and duplicities of the Sonnets, "A Lover's Complaint," Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, All's Well that Ends Well, and Cymbeline. Requirements: active class participation, several short writing assignments, and a final 15-page paper. Major Seminar. Open only to English majors and qualified non-majors. Permission of English Department chair required; see information above. Enrollment limited to 15. (Pre-1800)