Universitatea Babeş–Bolyai, Cluj–NapocaFacultatea de LitereAnul universitar 2010-2011Semestrul II

I. Informaţii generale despre SEMINAR (anul I, Engleza B)

Titlul disciplinei:Literatură engleză (Teatru englez: Restauraţia)The Restoration Theatre: English Drama from 1660-1710

Codul: 12261Numărul de credite: 5Locul de desfăşurare: FACULTY OF LETTERSProgramarea în orar a activităţilor: seminar bilunar

II. Informaţii despre titularul de curs, seminar, lucrare practică sau laborator

Nume, titlul ştiinţific: CARMEN BORBÉLY, LECTURER, PHD.Informaţii de contact : carmenborbely@yahoo.com Ore de audienţă: 2

III. Descrierea disciplinei:

Seminar Description & Objectives

This introductory, bi-monthly seminar on English Restoration Drama aims:1. to familiarise the students with the historical context of the seventeenth-century

Restoration theatre, with particular emphasis on the Baroque as its cultural background;

2. to develop the students’ critical understanding of the political and religious underpinnings of the twin restorations (monarchical and theatrical);

3. to facilitate the students’ critical reflection on several dramatic species favoured by the Restoration period

4. to encourage the students’ productive discussion of several seventeenth-century plays (comedies, heroic tragedies and tragicomedies) included in the course syllabus.

The seminar will be conducted through an interactive strategy, using both lecture and discussion on the principal reading assignments for each class. Students will give individual or collaborative reports, charting very punctually the literary and theoretical readings assigned. All required reading (marked as ‘compulsory’) should be completed before class, with the possibility of covering supplementary reading material for the written reports, should the students’ interests require this.

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IV. Bibliografia obligatorie:

Compulsory Bibliography

Under Compulsory Bibliography are listed the literary works that are considered to be representative for Restoration Drama. These works are obligatory for all the students attending this course. All the works included in the list of Compulsory Bibliography can be found at the English Library, Faculty of Letters, Cluj-Napoca, either as separate items, or as part of the Reader (1) compiled by the teacher and deposited at the Faculty of Letters, English Library in two copies. Alternatively, students can also consult these works at the internet addresses mentioned below:

Primary Bibliography (compulsory):

1. John Dryden: Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1667)http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/drampoet.html

2. John Dryden: The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards (1672) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15349/15349-h/15349-h.htm

3. John Dryden: Marriage A-la-Mode (1673) Engl. 18672http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15349/15349-h/15349-h.htm

4. Aphra Behn: The Rover I (1681) http://drama.eserver.org/plays/17th_century/rover/

5. William Wycherley: The Country Wife (1675) Engl. 18379http://www.bibliomania.com/0/6/274/1876/frameset.html

6. William Congreve: The Way of the World (1694)http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext98/dbdlr10.txt

V. Materiale folosite în cadrul procesului educaţional specific disciplinei:

1. Lectures will be delivered using an overhead projector (supplied by the Faculty of Letters). This will provide the students with an outline of each session structure and with a clear signposting of the major theoretical issues covered.2. Each lecture will have an accompanying handout, charting the fundamental concepts or key points to be discussed. After the completion of each seminar/lecture, these serial handouts will be placed in a special folder at English Library, Faculty of Letters, Cluj-Napoca.

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3. The secondary/optional reading material for each lecture/seminar has been assembled by the teacher in a special Reading Packet (Reader2), which includes the Course Outline and the suggested chapters and studies for the students to consult.

VI. Planificarea /Calendarul întâlnirilor şi a verificărilor/examinărilor intermediare:

SEMINAR OUTLINE

WEEK 1: Setting the Stage– Restoration playhouses, audiences and performance

Topics:Seminar introduction. Presentation of the seminar outline, objectives and requirements. Reader information pack. Historical timeline. Theatrical monopoly. Professionalisation of authorship. Playhouse design. Baroque illusionism. Performance/performers. Restoration audiences.

WEEK 2: A. Ideologies & Counter-ideologies: the ambivalent politics of Restoration drama

Topics: The ideology of Restoration comedy. Tory aesthetics v. Whig aesthetics. Hegemonic discourse and oppositional dialogism. Between royalist loyalism and bourgeois individualism. Cavalier ethics, urbanity and libertinism. Thomas Hobbes and The Leviathan: absolutism, natural savagery, and theories of social contract. The decline of the aristocratic world-view and the rise of the bourgeoisie.

B. Baroque tensions: the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns

Topics: Ambivalent loyalties: between neoclassicism and modernity. Building an English dramatic canon. Theorising the rhymed heroic play.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Compulsory: READ: John Dryden: Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1667)

Optional:

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Levine, Joseph M. Between the Ancients and the Moderns: Baroque Culture in Restoration England New Haven [Conn.] Yale University Press, 1999, pp. 35-52.

WEEK 3: Spec(tac)ular extravaganzas: Restoration theatre and the Baroque

Topics: The glorious extravaganza of the High Baroque tragedy. John Dryden and the rhymed heroic play. Formalised structure and melodramatic plot. A dramatic experiment: overwrought passions and the body politic. The noble savage and the epic hero.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Compulsory:READ: John Dryden: The Conquest of Granada (1672)

Optional: Hughes, Derek. English Drama 1660-1700 Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, pp. 240-306.

WEEK 4: LECTURE 4 : Carnival masquerade: gender and ‘subversive mimesis’

Topics: The politics of gender & the gender of politics in Restoration drama. From ritual spectacles to carnival pageants: Bakhtin and the carnivalesque. Crossdressing and ‘subversive mimesis.’ Role reversal and the suspension of hierarchical structures. Prenuptial agreements and provisos. Performing identities: female wits and reformed libertines.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Compulsory:READ: Aphra Behn: The Rover I (1681)

Optional:

Lowenthal, Cynthia. Performing Identities on the Restoration Stage Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003, pp. 1-34.

WEEK 5: Tragedy & Tragicomedy: the (im)purity of (a) dramatic form

Topics: A controversial dramatic form: Tragicomedy. Baroque mixture of heterogeneous elements: the encroachment of

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generic limits. Receptions, genesis, definitions. Tragicomedy and the restoration critics. Evanescent forms. Structural split: platonic, idealistic, heroic plot v. anti-romantic, pragmatic, comic plots. Thematic disjunction, formal symmetry. Between regicide and restoration: the political function of Restoration tragicomedies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Compulsory:READ: John Dryden: Marriage A-la-Mode (1673)

Optional: Maguire, Nancy Klein. “Tragicomedy.” In Fisk, Deborah Payne (ed), The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre. Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 86-106.

WEEK 6: Sensuous appetites: rakes, fops and the elaborate adventure of sexual intrigue

Topics: Carolean comedy . The libertine’s aesthetics of “natural” love. Cavalier rakes v. cuckolds and fops. Transgressive comic figures (the fool, the jester, garrulous women). Cynical doctrines of hedonistic appetite. The contrast of rural and metropolitan values.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Compulsory : READ: William Wycherley, The Country Wife (1675)

Optional : Canfield, J. Douglas. “Nubile Tricksters Land Their Men.” In Tricksters & Estates: On the Ideology of Restoration Comedy Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1997, pp. 33-44.

WEEK 7: Conclusions: William Congreve and the Restoration comedy of manners

Topics: The ‘mixt’ way of comedy: between Fletcherian wit v. Jonsonian humour. The savagery of Congreve’s satire. The attractiveness of evil. Vestigial and reformed rakes.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Compulsory : READ: William Congreve: The Way of the World (1700)

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VII. Modul de evaluare:Assessment Guidelines:

CLASS PARTICIPATION AND ATTENDANCE: required (75%). Penalties will not be imposed for your first absence; thereafter, the 10% from your final course grade will drop one grade for each session missed. Excessive absences may, nevertheless, result in failure of the course.

LEADING CLASS DISCUSSION: Students may sign up individually or in pairs to give presentations of a particular play and to initiate discussion for one of the sessions. Students leading discussion will be directed in advance as to the focus of their discussion questions. They may opt for waving the home assignment.

WRITTEN (HOME) ASSIGNMENTS: 2. 1. The first will be a shorter (mid-term) assignment (probably due in April, just after

the Easter break), requiring you to comment on a topic discussed in the previous classes (1-2 pages maximum). You will receive the instructions two weeks ahead of the deadline.

2. The final paper will be a more comprehensive research paper (5 pages) on a topic of your choice in connection with our readings (typed or word-processed with standard double-spacing). Late papers will be penalized one grade for each missed deadline. Suggested date for handing in your essays: last week in the semester.

GRADING: CLASS ATTENDANCE: 10%. CONTRIBUTION TO CLASS DISCUSSIONS: 20%. MID-TERM TEST: 20%. END-OF-TERM PAPER: 50%. NOTA BENE: Outstanding presentations and class contributions will exempt those students from having to write this paper.

VIII. Detalii organizatorice, gestionarea situaţiilor excepţionale:Plagiarism will incur failure of the examination for this seminar and the main course on the Literature of the Restoration and the Enlightenment periods.

The grade from this seminar (Restoration Drama) will count as 33% of the final grade for the Course on The Literature of the Restoration and the Enlightenment periods.

IX. Bibliografia opţională:

Optional Reading Material

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Part 1 of the Reader (specially designed for this course) contains, COMPULSORY texts, while Part 2 of the Reader, as you will notice, comprises OPTIONAL/SECONDARY reading material – book chapters and articles – which provide background and explication for the topics analysed. Although the Optional texts are obviously not required reading, you may choose to consult them, since they give you relevant material for preparing your presentations. For those students who feel they need further investigation of particular topics, I can make supplementary secondary bibliography available to them on request.

Apart from the Optional Bibliography included in the Reader (2), in the list below you can find further surveys of Restoration Drama. These books are available at the English Library of the Faculty of Letters. Students are also warmly encouraged to consult other alternative bibliographical sources, which can be found at the British Council Library or in the Online Databases of the Central University Library in Cluj-Napoca (for instance, Literature Online, www.chadwyck-healey.org).

1. Daiches, David. A Critical History of English Literature. London: Secker & Warburg, 1960.2. Day, Martin S. History of English Literature 1660-1837. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1963.3. Mudure, Mihaela Istorie si literatura. Dacia: Napoca Star, 2001.4. DeMaria, Robert (ed). British Literature 1640-1789. A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.5. Zwicker, Steven N. The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1650-1740. Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Decan,                                                 Sef de catedra,                                      Titular curs,Prof. dr. Corin Braga               Prof.dr. Mihai Zdrenghea Lect. Dr. Carmen Borbely...

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