Kursinformation

Twins separated in a shipwreck on the wild coast of somewhere, a young woman disguised as a young man, a lady falling in love with this young woman, more people falling in love all over the place, more confusion, a sub-plot featuring hilarious characters with names such as “Sir Toby Belch”, a duel (almost), lots of humour, prison, madness and multiple marriages in the end: Twelfth Night has it all. This course will give you an opportunity to engage in a close reading of this play. We shall consider historical and cultural contexts as well as questions relating to the staging of the play, both in Shakespeare’s time and today. We shall also look at cinematic and other adaptations and works of art inspired by thi comedy.

            Please buy this edition and none other: William Shakespeare (ed.: Keir Elam), Twelfth Night. The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series (Bloomsbury), ISBN 9781903436998. You will need the text from the first week of the seminar, so buy your book as soon as possible and start reading. Do not waste your money on other editions without substantial annotations as these would be useless for the purposes of this course. Very useful background knowledge on key cultural and literary contexts of Shakespeare’s time can be found here: Christoph Heyl, Kleine Englische Literaturgeschichte. J.B. Metzler. ISBN-13: 978-3476045096.

Requirements: Good preparation for each session, active participation, including quite a bit of sighing and shouting plus doing any amount of wild, exciting and outrageous things. You will get a chance to turn into a confused duke, an aggressive nobleman, a young woman disguised as a young man, a thoroughly evil guy or a clown. Also anything that might be required according to your Modulhandbuch / Studienordnung.

We currently assume that teaching will be entirely on campus and in person. This, however depends on the further development of the Pandemic. Watch this space, and read all e-mails sent to your official university e-mail address.

Please join the seminar´s Moodle room (William Shakespeare). You will receive further information, including the Moodle password, via e-mail. Please make sure to use and check your official university e-mail addresses at all times. Do not use any other addresses, and do not have e-mails sent to your university address forwarded to other addresses.

Just in case your application is rejected by the LSF system: If you want to do this course because you are genuinely interested, you will be most welcome, no matter what LSF says. Please get in touch with claudia.hausmann@uni-due.de who will enrol you manually. The worst that might happen to you is that you cannot do a Leistungsnachweis if you lack the formal requirements.