English 434
Dr. Desmet
Spring 1997
Topics for Group Web Project
Undergraduate: English 434
1. Faustus as a Magician:
What would a English Renaissance audience have thought about
Faustus's profession as a magician? What assumptions about magic
would they have brought with them to the play and what kind of
magician would they have seen Faustus as?
Sources:
- Barbara Traister, Heavenly Necromancers
- T. McAlindon, Doctor Faustus, Divine in Show
- Robert West, "The Importance of Magic in Doctor
Faustus," in English Literary Renaissance 4 (1974): 218-
40.
2. Race and the Moors in Fair Maid of the West
Fair Maid features an English barmaid who travels east,
wins her honey and wows foreign rulers from a different race and
culture with her beauty. What are the prevailing Renaissance
attitudes toward race in the Renaissance and are these the
attitudes you find in Fair Maid of the West?
Sources:
- Anthony Barthelemy, Black Face, Maligned Race
- Jack D'Amico, The Moor in English Renaissance Drama
- Jean Howard, "An English Lass Among the Moors," in Patricia
Parker and Margo Hendricks, Women, "Race," & Writing in the
Early Modern Period
- Kim Hall, Things of Darkness
3. The World of Venice in Volpone
Why is Volpone set in Venice? Why did Jonson choose
this particular place and people for his comedy of greed, power,
lust and the law?
Sources:
- Richard Lee Poss, The Myth of Venice in the English Drama
of the Seventeenth Century
4. The Hermaphrodite in Volpone
Why is the figure of the hermaphrodite, the supposed child of
Volpone, prominent in this play? What does the hermaphrodite
represent in social and sexual terms in the Renaissance?
Sources:
- Grace Tiffany, Erotic Beasts and Social Monsters (on
reserve)
- Stephen Greenblatt, "Fiction and Friction," in
Shakespearean Negotiations
5. Lycanthropy in The Duchess of Malfi
Why does Ferdinand, the incestuously-inclined and cruel
brother of the Duchess of Malfi, turn into a werewolf (on the
inside!) when he has his sister murdered?
Sources:
- "Hairy on the In-Side": The Duchess of Malfi and the
Body of Lycanthropy," Yale Journal of Criticism 7:2 (Fall
1994): 85-129.
- Montague Summers, The Werewolf
- The Lycanthropy Reader
- Basil Cooper, The Werewolf in Legend and Fact
6. Scythians, Turks, and Barbarians in Tamburlaine
Tamburlaine is a Scythian, a mythical and peregrinating race
of barbarians. Bajazeth is a Turk. What assumptions about these
cultural identities did Marlowe's audience bring to
Tamburlaine?
Source:
- John Gillies, The Geography of Difference
- Emily Bartels, Spectacles of Strangeness
- Richard Wilson, "Visible Bullets"
- Samuel Claggett Chew, The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and
England during the Renaissance
- Vivien Thomas and William Tydemann, Christopher Marlowe:
The Plays and their Sources
7. Attitudes Toward Female Rulers in The Duchess of
Malfi
As the Duchess expires, she says "I am Duchess of Malfi
still." Obviously, her rule and her public identity mean a lot to
her. How would Webster's audience or the Renaissance in general
have responded to a female ruler?
Sources:
- Theodora Jankowski, Women in Power in the Early Modern
Drama (on reserve)
- Marie Axton, The Queen's Two Bodies
Graduate
1. Domestic Crime in Arden of Feversham
Why did Arden of Feversham capture the public
imagination? What about this event made it paradigmatic of some
cultural phenomenon?
Source:
- Fran Dolan, Dangerous Familiars
- Lena Cowen Orlin, Private Matters and Public Culture in
Post-Reformation England
- Catherine Belsey, "Alice Arden's Crime," in The Subject of
Tragedy and in Staging the Renaissance
2. Sources for Mariam
How as Elizabeth Carey used, changed or abused her principal
source(s)? Is her view of Mariam particularly feminist?
Source:
- The Tragedy of Mariam, ed. Waller(?) PR2499.F3T7 1994
(Has excerpts from Josephus)
3. Hanging as Execution in The Spanish
Tragedy
Hanging is a judicial punishment rather than a method of
murder in the Renaissance. Why, then, are two people hanged on
stage in this play?
Sources:
- Frank Ardolino, "The Hangman's Noose and the Empty Box: Kyd's
Use of Dramatic and Mythological Sources . . ." Renaissance
Quarterly 30 (1977): 334-40.
- Molly Smith, "The Theater and the Scaffold: Death as
Spectacle in The Spanish Tragedy," Studies in English
Literature 32.2 (1992): 217-32.
- James Shapiro, "Tragedies Naturally Performed," in Staging
the Renaissance
4. Cross-Dressing in The Roaring Girl
Moll Cutpurse is a real character and cross-dressing is the
name of the game on the English stage. What happens when it
becomes a subject for metadrama?
Sources:
- Mary Beth Rose, The Expense of Spirit (on reserve)
- Stephen Orgel, Impersonations
- Marjorie Garber, "The Logic of the Transvestite," in
Staging the Renaissance
**********************************