English R1A

Reading and Composition: Eros in Shakespeare

Book List

Hacker, Diana: Rules for Writers; Shakespeare: Anthony & Cleopatra; Shakespeare: As You Like It; Shakespeare: Macbeth; Shakespeare: Othello; Shakespeare: Twelfth Night

Description

In this course we will read some of Shakespeare’s works and look at the aesthetics of Eros. We will read Shakespeare with an eye toward how Eros is represented: as a figure (the god of love), as “love” in the most spiritual sense to the bawdiest sense, in the reproductive sense and in the sense of the harmonizing force in Shakespeare’s art. In this course we will read one of Shakespeare’s long poems, some sonnets and five plays focusing on the reading experience as a way to track literary devices at play and as a way to generate fresh and compelling assertions and arguments about these works.

The goals of this course are to have fun, to explore, to learn to read closely, to develop increasing skills in clear writing, thesis and paragraph development, and argumentation. We will engage deeply with the texts, discuss them feverishly in class, and write a number of short essays, including revisions, toward the general goal of producing well-shaped and polished critical essays.