ENGL 290 - Shakespearean Comedy

FC ARHU WINT

4 credits
A study of many of Shakespeare’s comedies, from the cross-dressed and “festive” to the darkly ironic and macabre. Themes include love, sex, gender, friendship, marriage, magic, transformation, transgression, ingenuity, cruelty, mistaken identity, forgiveness, coming of age, wit, and home versus exile. We will also explore the limits of comedy as a genre, as several of these plays provide the generically necessary marriages and “happy endings,” yet their resolutions can seem so awkward, forced, or incomplete as to emphasize rather than solve the conflicts in the play; almost always, there is a scapegoat excluded from the festivities.

Prerequisites: one course with the WINT attribute.