ATS2492 Reading the past: Shakespearean drama

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. 1

   have a familiarity with the various and changing intellectual contexts -- aesthetic, philosophical, religious, scientific, political and social -- of the pre-Romantic period and of the ways in which they form and inform its literature;

2. 2

   have an understanding of the ways in which a variety of poetic and dramatic texts explore the concepts of power (political, social and sexual) and of desire (religious, courtly, neo-Platonic and sexual) in the pre-Romantic period;

3. 3

   have the ability to respond imaginatively and critically to texts of a period of English literature whose traditions and conventions, though very different from those of the present, have had a significant influence on it;

4. 4

   have some understanding of the complexity of gender- and race-representation in pre-Romantic literature;

5. 5

   have the ability to apply different critical approaches to pre-Romantic texts and to the preoccupations and themes which they embody;

6. 6

   have the ability to argue, interpret and analyse effectively both in written work and orally in seminar discussion.