LIT 49903, spring 2021
TF 2:00-3:20
Dr. Jean E. Graham
Email address: graham@tcnj.edu
Course description: In this seminar, we will read early modern drama including Macbeth, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, and lesser-known plays along with relevant historical documents such as pamphlets recounting witchcraft trials. The course will reflect a range of approaches including feminist, Marxist, and postcolonial. Learn the European history leading to Doctor Faustus, Macbeth, and the Salem witch trials. Explore the relationships between witchcraft and Shakespeare’s monarchs: Elizabeth I and her astrologer, Dr. John Dee, and James I, who presided over witch trials and wrote a book on the topic (Daemonologie).
Prerequisites: LIT 201 and LIT 202; English major (or minor with permission from the Associate Chair); and junior status.
Course units: 1 (4 semester hours). This course is 4 semester hours because the students are assigned additional learning tasks that make the semester’s learning experience more deeply engaged and rigorous, and no additional classroom space is needed.
Place in the curriculum: LIT 499 counts as a capstone in the English major (or an elective in the English minor). All capstones are writing-intensive, with scaffolded assignments.
Spring 2021: This course will be virtual, with a mix of synchronous and asynchronous experiences. TCNJ is closed on Tuesday March 30, and we will not meet or have any assignment due. On Friday April 2, we will observe TCNJ Recharge Week by meeting synchronously, with no class preparation expected. There will be no final exam.
Required texts: The following texts should be available at TCNJ’s bookstore.
Corbin, Peter, and Douglas Sedge, editors. Three Jacobean Witchcraft Plays: Sophinisba, The Witch, The Witch of Edmonton. Manchester UP, 1989.
Gibson, Marion, editor. Early Modern Witches: Witchcraft Cases in Contemporary Writing. Routledge, 2000.
Marlowe, Christopher. Doctor Faustus. Edited by David Scott Kastan. Norton Critical Editions. Norton, 2004.
Murfin, Ross, and Supryia M. Ray. Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. 4th ed., Bedford St. Martin’s, 2017.
Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Edited by William C. Carroll. Bedford St. Martin’s, 1999.
Syllabus: in Canvas.