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Dec 17, 2024
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ENGL 190Y - Venetian ShakespeareSemester Hours: 3
Like so many of his contemporaries, William Shakespeare was both
fascinated and disturbed by the existence of Venice. The city’s diverse
population, its cosmopolitan economy and its status as a republic
offered not only a challenge to the more homogeneous world of late
16th- and early 17th-century England but also provided an alternative
to rule by kings, queens and princes. In this course we will explore
Shakespeare’s two plays dealing with marginal, if tolerated members of
Venetian society: the Jew in The Merchant of Venice (a comedy, and yes
it is a comedy, although a bitter and bleak one) and the Moor or
African in Othello (a tragedy). In our examination of these texts we
will try to uncover exactly what it is about Venice that so haunts
Shakespeare’s imagination. In addition, we will visit those sites
dramatized in the plays such as the Ghetto and the Doge’s Palace to see
what they help us to understand about the city’s power. See Study Abroad programs.
January 2007 Offering:
10129: To be arranged; Alter/Fixell; Hofstra in London
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