01 TTH6 CAC 33517 TURNER FH-B2
01-Dekker, Middleton, Jonson and the Drama of Everyday Life
This course examines plays by three of the most important comic dramatists of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, and Ben Jonson. Through a close reading of their work alongside selected theoretical essays, we will open an investigation into the major institutions, social structures, and lived habits that shaped everyday life for people at the turn of the seventeenth century. Discussion will consider the fundamental qualities of early modern drama (language, character, prop, act and scene), with a focus on the way plays provided a form for different and often radically conflicting systems of knowledge, values, or belief. Readings will include social history of the period; theoretical essays by Althusser, de Certeau, Weber, Barthes, and others will serve as guides to methodology. Topics will include the definition of the “normal,” the “ordinary,” the radical, and the deviant; competing lexicons and ways of speaking; satire; the theater as a site of eroticism, fantasy, and dissident sexuality; the emergence of companionate marriage modes and “private life”; changes in social class and status designations; the influence of a market economy; objects as commodities, fetishes and signs; using, walking, and gifting as models of action, knowledge, and social transformation. Previous coursework in Renaissance drama (including Shakespeare) is recommended but not required. Course will be in a seminar format (primarily discussion, with occasional mini-lectures); students should be prepared for a high reading load, including dense and abstract theoretical essays, and be ready to sustain a high level of intellectual effort for the duration of the course.
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