معلومات المقرر الدراسي

This course will look at English Renaissance literature through the lens of a special topic: concepts of friendship and love. This is in order to test whether the historical distance of these texts can be bridged more easily by relating them to human experiences of intimacy that seem universal but are often culturally and historically coded. While theories of friendship in the Renaissance usually follow those of Aristotle and Cicero, views of male and female friendship have to be adapted to changing social forms of life in a more complex, (early) modern society; most notably, they have to be distinguished more clearly from forms of servitude on the one hand and forms of (erotic and/or spiritual) love on the other hand. We will study these changes in poetry and drama of the 16th and 17th centuries, including Shakespeare's sonnets, but also the little-known early comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona and a number of non-Shakespearean texts from the earl of Surrey to Katharine Philips

Set texts: William Shakespeare: The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Arden ed.); Shakespeare's Sonnets (Arden ed.); Romeo and Juliet (Arden ed.

– Due to the current situation, this course will most likely take the form of weekly Zoom sessions and a Moodle forum.