| CODE | ENG5076 | ||||||||||||
| TITLE | Hamlets | ||||||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 05 - Postgraduate Modular Diploma or Degree Course | ||||||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 7 | ||||||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 5 | ||||||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | English | ||||||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | William Shakespeare's Hamlet is one of the pre-eminent works in Western literature: seemingly timeless, deeply influential, and caught up in an extraordinarily active process of critical reinterpretation and literary (and other) reworkings. This study-unit approaches the play as a case-study in how texts are received across literary studies, the humanities and the arts. It reviews Hamlet鈥檚 histories of reception and commentary; looks at some of the play鈥檚 influences on other literature and drama as well as in art, music, popular culture and beyond; and asks how and why it might be that this particular play has proven so powerfully irresistible. After an initial look at the text itself and its editing histories, the study-unit considers aspects of the play in performance. It then moves on to discussion of some notable commentaries on the play, taking in observations by figures like Goethe, Coleridge, Eliot and others. Hamlet鈥檚 influence on various disciplines, discourses and practices, from philosophy to psychoanalysis, from painting to music, is referred to, as is its influence on work by writers like James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard, John Updike, Ian McEwan and Maggie O鈥橣arrell. Throughout, reference is made to readings of the play by key Shakespearean scholars. Hamlet鈥檚 complex and sometimes contradictory pluralities 鈥� hence the title of the study-unit 鈥� will be up for close discussion. An important component of the study-unit is that students are invited to see Hamlet as a case-study on the basis of which to think about processes of literary revisitation and critical reception involving other influential texts within the English canon: e.g. Marlowe鈥檚 Dr Faustus, Mary Shelley鈥檚 Frankenstein, Emily Bront毛鈥檚 Wuthering Heights, Arthur Conan Doyle鈥檚 Sherlock Holmes stories, and others. Study-Unit Aims: - To provide students with an awareness of the complex status and of the text of Hamlet and its editorial histories; - To explore some of the reasons for Hamlet's pre-eminence in the literary canon and its enduring place in theatrical, cinematic, televisual, artistic and musical performance, as well as in literary and critical reworkings of the play; - To familiarise students with some of the major critical statements on Hamlet.(iv) To guide students in how to go about writing on one of the most commented works in the canons of world literature; - To allow students the opportunity for discussions of the diverse Hamlets in literature, criticism, performance and textual scholarship; - To help students respond to aspects of different critical schools on the basis of their approach to the play; - To help students relate literary history to contemporary literary cultures. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Appreciate Hamlet 鈥� and Shakespeare 鈥� more deeply and from a more informed basis; - Build familiarity with Early Modern literature and its diverse contexts. - Acquire broad awareness of the reworking and reinterpretation of Hamlet across different literary periods and genres, and across different discourses and practices within the Humanities and the Arts; - Through Hamlet as a case-study, practice analytically reading criticism through the literature that has driven it, as well as more conventionally reading literature through leading critical texts; - Appreciate the ways in Hamlet can serve as an instructive case-study in looking at the ways in which literary and critical reception evolves and, sometimes, shifts in its reaction to any given text. 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Identify and use the key online resources for the study of Early Modern texts; - Write perceptively about textual variations and their significance in assessing a major canonical work; - Relate a major canonical work of the Early Modern period with literature, culture and criticism from other periods, articulating that relation in both seminar and written discussion; - Overcome hesitancy when attempting to write comprehensively and with focus on a major and extensively commented work within the literary canon. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts: Shakespeare, William, Hamlet, ed. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, 2nd edn (London: Bloomsbury, The Arden Shakespeare, 2016). Supplementary Readings: Bate, Jonathan, The Genius of Shakespeare (London: Picador, 2008). [Available] Belsey, Catherine, Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden: The Construction of Family Values in Early Modern Culture (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2001). [Not available] Bevington, David, Murder Most Foul: Hamlet through the Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). [Not available] Bloom, Harold, Hamlet: Poem Unlimited (New York: Riverhead, 2003). [Not available] de Grazia, Margreta, Hamlet without Hamlet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). [Available] Greenblatt, Stephen, Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). [Not available] Kis茅ry, Andr谩s, Hamlet鈥檚 Moment: Drama and Political Knowledge in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). [Available] Massai, Sonia, and Lucy Munro (eds), Hamlet: The State of Play (London: Bloomsbury, 2023). Thompson, Ann, and Neil Taylor (eds), Hamlet: A Critical Reader (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | ||||||||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
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| LECTURER/S | Ivan Callus James David Corby Maria Frendo |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2025/6. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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