Prospectus

nl en

Literature: Shakespeare's Language

Course
2011-2012

Admission requirements

None.

Description

It has sometimes been said that William Shakespeare “reinvented” the English language. This course offers the opportunity to explore Shakespeare’s linguistic creativity, in the context of the formal, social, and cultural resources of early modern English, as well as early modern poetics. Special topics for investigation will include: Shakespeare’s pronunciation, metrics, diction, and grammar; Renaissance rhetorical theory; neologisms and Renaissance “Latinity”; puns, malapropisms and other Shakespearean wordplay; language and gender; the problem of the “unspeakable.”

Course objectives

This course trains students in the analysis of both the linguistic and the creative aspects of Shakespeare’s language. Through primary source materials and secondary critical studies, students will learn to identify and interpret Shakespeare’s use of early modern English. The course includes hands-on, in-class exercises, where students will be able to speak in “original” Shakespearean pronunciation, invent new English words using Renaissance principles of word-formation, and write a Shakespearean sonnet. Students will gain special expertise in a formal, philosophical, political, theoretical, or cultural aspect of Shakespeare’s language, as well as literary and/or linguistic research skills, in the writing of a final research paper.

Timetable

The timetable will be available by June 1st at www.hum.leidenuniv.nl/engels.

Mode of instruction

One two-hour seminar per week

Assessment method

  • Short essays, quizzes, exercises, creative assignments (40%)

  • Class participation (10%)

  • Final paper proposal and class presentation (10%)

  • Final paper (40%)

Blackboard

This course is supported by Blackboard.

Reading list

  • William Shakespeare, Sonnets. ISBN 978-0300085068

  • William Shakespeare, Love’s Labor’s Lost. ISBN 978-0743484923

  • William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar. ISBN 978-0743484932

  • William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew. ISBN 978-0743477574

  • William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus. ISBN 978-0671722920

  • Catherine M.S. Alexander, ed. Shakespeare and Language. ISBN 978-0521539005

  • Erasmus, De Copia. ISBN 978-0874622126

  • Russ McDonald, Shakespeare and the Arts of Language. ISBN 978-0198711711

Registration

Students should register through uSis.

Contact information

Departmental Office English Language and Culture, P.N. van Eyckhof 4, room 102C. Tel. 071 5272144; mail: english@hum.leidenuniv.nl.
Coordinator of Studies Master: Ms. K. van der Zeeuw-Filemon, P.N. van Eyckhof 4, room 103C.

Remarks

No remarks.