Interpretation Seminar 2
Subject is not scheduled Not scheduled
| Code | Completion | Credits | Range | Language Instruction | Semester |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 202INE2 | Z | 2 | 2T | English | summer |
Subject guarantor
Name of lecturer(s)
Learning outcomes of the course unit
Instructing students to read carefully, make reading a need in life, that is, to demonstrate its sense. Considering the study focus, it is a training to read dramatic texts. Drama is not the summation of all lines and stage knowledge. To read a dramatic text is to decipher its structure. The interpretation course teaches this specific type of reading. It also shows how the structure of a dramatic text (today more often, post-dramatic) changed throughout the history of theatre.
Mode of study
Guided discussion. In the first year of the two-year course, Shakespeare is the subject of study. His position and significance reflects back to the beginning of drama culture and forward to modern drama. In the second year the students encounter with modern and contemporary anglophone plays. Special focus is given to play and theatricality as a theme. Students prepare short presentations.
Prerequisites and co-requisites
Course contents
Students come to class with a previously read text which is, based on the first observations, read again and re-interpreted, in at least key scenes. Primary texts are accompanied by reading secondary texts or other material of visual character (online).
Recommended or required reading
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Mansfield Centee, CT: Martino Publishing, 2014 [1950].
Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. London: Methuen, 2001.
Aristotle. Poetics. Mineola: Dover Publications, 1997.
Kott, Jan. Shakespeare Our Contemporary. Translated by Boleslaw Taborski. London: Methuen, 1967.
De Garcia, Magreta and Wells, Stanley, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Sontag, Susan. An essay „Against Interpretation“ distributed as a printed document in the class.
Barthes, Roland. „The Death of the Author“ In Image, Music, Text. Translated by Stephan Heath. New York: Hill and Want, 1978.
Selected plays by William Shakespeare (King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Richard III., Coriolanus, Midsummer Night‘s Dream, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo a Julie, Measure for Measure, The Tempest and other, depending on the group focus).
Selected plays by Tom Stoppard, J. M. Synge, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Marina Carr, Martin McDonagh, Patrick Marber, Sarah Kane, Joe Penhall, Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, David Mamet and other playwrights according to group’s interest.
Other essays and texts are distributed in the class according to the need and focus of the group.
Assessment methods and criteria
Students gain credits after the first semester and do an exam after the second semester. Part of the exam is an oral presentation on a selected topic. Aside from active participation during the whole course, students are evaluated according to their ability to communicate their thoughts based on thorough reading.
Further information
No schedule has been prepared for this course