L625 25338 CHARNES (#2)
Shakespeare

4:00p – 5:15p TR

TOPIC: SHAKESPEAREAN CHARACTER AND THE FETISH

This course will introduce students to graduate-level study of
Shakespeare by examining what is most “Shakespearean” about
Shakespeare:  his pre-occupation with the representation and nature
of “character.”  Although “character criticism” has long been
discredited, we will try to retrieve the baby from the bathwater,
and come at the question of character from new perspectives.  Among
the questions we will pursue:  what is a “Shakespearean” character?
Do all figures in Shakespeare’s plays qualify as characters? If not,
why not?  What makes a character a Character?  The word “character”
is from the Greek, “to scratch, or engrave.”  While avoiding
Bloomian indulgences in the cult of Shakespearean personality, we
will attempt to find the scratches and singularities that engrave
certain figures in Shakespeare’s plays.  Our starting proposition
will be that it takes a fetish to raise (and raze) a character, that
something has to provoke it into being.  We will examine the
relationship between the fetish and character, as well as the fetish
of character, both within and beyond Shakespeare’s plays. We will
see if there is any cause in early modern nature that makes these
hard parts.

Students will write weekly informal response notes, and two 8-10pp.
papers.

Plays will include Richard II,  Henry V,  The Merchant of Venice,
Othello,  King Lear, and Troilus and Cressida.

Critical readings will include work by Adelman, De Grazia, Garber,
Greenblatt, Stallybrass and (of course) Bloom and Freud, as well as
others tba.