Moodle

The twenty-first century, the first digital century in which unimaginable amounts of data are shuffled around the globe, offers an enormous quantity of cultural production. Neither in literature nor in the theatre, in film or streaming TV has a canon been defined so far, which gives us some space for exploration. In this lecture course, we will discuss some of the most present or/and pertinent verbal and visual texts that British and Irish literatures and cultures have produced in the early twenty-first century. We will identify salient cultural contexts and debates, and we will of course closely read selected passages from our primary texts.

We will discuss and contextualize selected works by the following creatives (slight alterations during the lecture course are possible): Alan Moore, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, Ian McEwan, David Mitchell, Sarah Waters, Matthew Pearl, Jez Butterworth, Lucy Kirkwood, Mark Haddon, Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, Kazuo Ishiguro, Armando Iannucci, Hilary Mantel, Anna Burns, Claire Kilroy, Sam Mendes, Roger Deakins, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, John Logan, Candice Carty-Williams, Bernardine Evaristo, Simon Armitage, Ka(t)e Tempest, Imtiaz Dharker, Rob Cowen, Ali Smith, Jonathan Coe, John Lanchester, Amanda Craig, Julian Fellowes, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Jeanette Winterson.

There will be a final test (45 mins) in the second half of the last lecture, which will be held on 6 February 2023.

Recommended Text: Stephen Greenblatt et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Tenth Edition. Volumes D, E, F. New York: Norton, 2018.  ISBN 978-0-393-60313-2

NB: For this lecture course, you will only need a small part of volume F. Only a few of the texts we will be discussing are in the Norton Anthology. Those that are not and that you are supposed to read in advance, i.e., the parts of them you are expected to read, will be made available via moodle. Still, it is a good idea to own the Norton Anthology because you will find it useful for overview knowledge in this lecture course as well as in other courses. 

In this seminar, we will focus on three of Shakespeare’s history plays (which are also simply called histories): the first part of Henry IV, the second part of Henry IV and Henry V. These three plays belong to a group of four plays (including Richard II) that is called Shakespeare’s second tetralogy or the Lancaster tetralogy or the Henriad, and we will discuss what those terms mean at the beginning of the seminar. The plays offer fascinating insights into the potential of early modern theatre, political strategies, the idea of the early modern nation, gender constructs, the everyday experience and criticism of war as well as some of Shakespeare’s most subtle studies of human relationships and power. They are also the playground of one of Shakespeare’s most popular stage characters, the fat knight Sir John Falstaff, whose presence in the three plays we will read and analyse in detail.

Henry V, the climax of the second tetralogy, is Shakespeare’s most triumphalist and English nationalist history play, celebrating King Henry V as the archetypal English hero. We will also discuss Orson Welles’s film Chimes at Midnight (1965), two film versions of Henry V, one by Laurence Olivier (1944) and one Kenneth Branagh (1987), and we will take a look at some scenes from the first series of the BBC Two-production The Hollow Crown (2012).

 You must have read the first part of Henry IV by the second meeting.

Texts: You must own and read the following editions:

William Shakespeare. The First Part of King Henry IV. Ed. Herbert Weil and Judith Weil. 2nd ed. (The New Cambridge Shakespeare.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.   ISBN 978-0-521-68743-0 [paperback]

William Shakespeare. Henry V. Ed. Andrew Gurr. 2nd ed. (New Cambridge Shakespeare.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.   ISBN  978-0-521-61264-7 [paperback]

The text of the second part of Henry IV will be made available.

This course introduces students to theories and methods of cultural studies as they emerged out of literary studies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a process that is still ongoing in the twenty-first century. It therefore focuses on both the histories and the contemporary applications of cultural studies. It discusses major theorists, theories and methods, and it offers case studies that illustrate the applications of those. In order to do all this, we will discuss a range of verbal and visual texts.

 The written exam will take place Monday, 5 February 2024, 14:15 to 15:45.

Text: You need to own, read and bring to the respective meetings:

Peter Barry. Beginning Theory. 4th edition. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017.   ISBN 9781526121790