Module description
This module focuses on the cultural construction of revenge and revenge tragedy as a dramatic genre in the early modern period. Through hourly lectures and seminars, each week students will engage with a thrilling and variously gruesome / funny / deeply moving play, not studied elsewhere on the programme. The module spans the early modern period quite broadly, starting with translations of Seneca and Elizabethan attitudes toward revenge, and ending two-monarchs later on the Caroline stage. Typically, these plays will enable us to explore, among other things: sexual revenge and gender politics; constructions of racial and national identity; ideas of parody and metatheatre; and madness and moral ambiguity. We will analyse both canonical and less well-known works to map the evolution of the genre.
These plays present us with a limited author demographic, but the module will draw on work by women and writers of colour responding to early modern revenge drama, exploring performance (contemporary and early modern), adaptation and appropriation wherever possible. Through its assessment pattern, the module places an emphasis on close-reading and contextual understanding. The module will think about current scholarly strands of enquiry (e.g. trauma, gender, sexuality, identity and agency, neurodiversity, CRT) in relation to revenge, as well as analysing the early modern cultural contexts – religion, the law, the family, social hierarchy, performance etc. – which shaped this most provocative of dramatic genres.
Assessment details
3 hour examination (alternative essay offered for Semester 1 only study abroad students)
Educational aims & objectives
Through this module, students will develop a deep understanding of the historical and cultural construction of revenge and the literary construction of revenge tragedy in the early modern period. They will sharpen their skills of critical analysis by closely engaging with works by seven playwrights, as well as with a range of non-dramatic early modern texts (extracts from essays, religious tracts, pamphlets and poems). This module will introduce students to the variety of ways in which a range of early modern contexts – religion, the law, the family, social hierarchy, performance - shaped how revenge plays were written and performed, and in turn how those plays influenced the conceptualisation of revenge in early modern society more broadly. They will be challenged to think about the ways in which dramatic genres are constructed, and how a genre such as revenge tragedy shapes their own engagement with the plays and with the concept of revenge today. They will also consider the ways in which a concept / genre such as revenge shapes their understanding of the literature and culture of the early modern period more broadly.
Learning outcomes
By the end of this module, students will have had the opportunity to develop intellectual, transferable and practical skills appropriate to a Level 5 module, and in particular will be able to:
- Demonstrate detailed knowledge of revenge as a culturally and historically specific construct, and of the evolving conventions of early modern revenge tragedy as a genre.
- Participate in informed discussion of the various ideological frameworks and cultural contexts that contributed to the development of a historically specific understanding of revenge.
- Analyse ideas of agency and identity in relation to the act of revenge as it is presented on the early modern stage.
- Speak and write confidently about a range of early modern plays (spanning the 1580s-1630s), as well as non-dramatic texts from the period (through close-reading and contextual understanding).
- Critically evaluate some key aspects of early modern and contemporary performance practice.
- Synthesise, assess and engage with secondary critical material written by scholars from a diverse range of backgrounds drawing on many different critical approaches, including gender and sexuality studies, Critical Race studies, disability studies and neurodiversity studies.
Suggested reading list
Nicola Imbraciso, '“Take Up the Body”: Early Modern English Translations of Seneca's Corpses’, Early Modern Literary Studies 17.2 (2014)
Paul Piatkowski, ‘Ghost Parrot(ing): Re/Deconstructing Order through Psychic Mimesis, Revenge Justice, and Conjuration in Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy’, Intertexts 20.2 (2016), 113-134
Lizz Angelo, ‘In/di/gestion: Seneca→Shakespeare→South Park’ in Farah Karim-Cooper, ed., Titus Andronicus: The State of the Play, London, England: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 223-247
Urvashi Chakravarty, ‘Fictions of Race: Racecraft, Reproduction, and Whiteness in Titus Andronicus’, English Literary Renaissance 52.3 (2022), 330-342
Catherine Richardson, ‘Shakespearean Comedy and the Early Modern Domestic Sphere’, in The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy, ed. by Heather Hirschfield (Oxford: OUP, 2018), pp. 135-15
Lucy Munro, ‘The Revision of Bussy D’Ambois’, in Munro, Children of the Queen’s Revels: A Jacobean Theatrical Repertory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 156-163
Hsiang-chun Chu, ‘“The Cackle of Skulls”: Role-Playing and Comic (Meta-)Theatricality in The Revenger's Tragedy’, Taiwan Journal of English Literature 3, (2006), 13-36.
Sonya Freeman Loftis, ‘Lycanthropy and Lunacy: Cognitive Disability in The Duchess of Malfi’ in Disability, and the Posthuman in the Medieval and Early Modern World (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019), pp. 209-225.
Ladan Naiyesh, ‘Feminine Endings in The Duchess of Malf’, Sillages Critiques 26 (2019), 14 paras
Pompa Banerjee, ‘The Gift: Economies of Kinship and Sacrificial Desire in ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore’, Studies in the Humanities 29 (2002), 137-49