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Global Voices: Shakespeare and the Early Modern World

Module description

This module focuses on the diverse voices of the Global Renaissance. Dramatic texts by Shakespeare and Marlowe and poetry of the English Renaissance will provide points of entry to the global stage, and be juxtaposed across the syllabus with the literature of travel and exploration to explore the perspectives of different cultures, religions, and epochs. The module will examine transcultural encounters and texts emerging from locales ranging from Mughal India to the New World; and from East Asia to North Africa.

Module aims - intentions of the module

Global Voices aims to introduce you to a range of canonical and lesser-known works of early modern literature from a fresh perspective, centring on the global contexts of English Renaissance Literature. You will examine the connections between texts and contexts, and explore a range of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts representing aspects of the Global Renaissance. As a core module on the Renaissance MA Pathway, Global Voices is also designed to develop your skills in researching and writing about early modern cultures.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate an advanced appreciation of specific authors and works of the early modern period
• 2. Demonstrate an advanced appreciation of the literary and cultural history of the early modern period
• 3. Demonstrate an advanced capacity to relate early modern texts to their cultural, historical and global contexts

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 4. Demonstrate a sophisticated and intellectually mature ability to analyse the literature an earlier era and to relate its concerns and its modes of expression to its historical context
• 5. Demonstrate an advanced and precise ability to work from the detail of literary texts, with a full appreciation of their formal aspects
• 6. Demonstrate an advanced and autonomous ability to understand and analyse relevant theoretical ideas, and to apply these ideas to literary texts.

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 7. Demonstrate advanced communication skills, and an ability to articulate your views convincingly both individually and in groups
• 8. Through essay-writing, demonstrate advanced research and bibliographic skills, an advanced and intellectually mature capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument and to write clear and correct prose
• 9. Through research for module assessments, demonstrate an advanced proficiency in information retrieval and analysis

Syllabus plan

The syllabus is designed to bring major works of early modern English literature alongside writing from the societies and regions they imagine or represent, and to explore contact and exchange between these spaces and societies. Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• Contact Zones: Shakespeare’s Othello and the early modern Mediterranean
• Settlements: Shakespeare’s Tempest and the writing of the New World
• Empire: Marlowe’s Tamburlaine and literature of the Mughal Empire
• Diaspora: Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and the voices of early modern Jewry
• Anglo-Moroccan relations and Heywood’s Fair Maid of the West
• Women on the Edge: Anne Bradstreet and Katherine Phillips
• Utopian literature in global perspective
• Travel and Exploration: Peter Mundy’s Travels in Europe and Asia and Muhammad Rabi’s The Ship of Sulaiman

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 50%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 50%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Core reading:

• Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine Parts 1 and 2, in Doctor Faustus and Other Plays, ed. David Bevington (Oxford, 1995)
• Thomas More, Utopia, in Three Early Modern Utopias, ed. Susan Bruce (Oxford, 1999)
• William Shakespeare, The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et. al.. 3^rd edn (W, W, Norton

Note: You are welcome to use alternative modern scholarly editions of any of the above works. Other readings will be supplied in class or made available online

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• Early English Books Online (EEBO)

Indicative learning resources - Other resources

• Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Writing the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012)
• Jess Edwards, Writing, Geometry and Space in Early Modern England and America: Circles in the Sand (London: Routledge, 2006)
• Nina Chordas, Forms in Early Modern Utopia: The Ethnography of Perfection (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010)
• Julie Sanders, The Cultural Geography of Early Modern Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)
• Jyotsna G. Singh, ed., A companion to the Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)

Key words search

Renaissance, early modern, global, travel, geography, culture, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Mughal