BASC80164 - Summer Literature Intensive Course: Shakespeare’s Venetian Plays Part 2: Othello

Course Description

Instructor: Nicholas Bellinson.  This one-week course may be taken as part of the two-week sequence (recommended) with “Shakespeare’s Venetian Plays: Othello”, or on its own.  Shakespeare sets two of his most painful plays in Venice: The Merchant of Venice and Othello. In both, Shakespeare dramatizes the downfall of a cultural outsider in a society historically renowned for its openness and diversity. What sort of world do the denizens of Shakespeare’s Venice – who are variously comic, devious, cynical, appetitive, pleasure-loving, and cruel; dazzling, impressive, beautiful, loyal, and truthful – inhabit and create? As we explore this world, our primary goal will be to read, appreciate, and attempt to understand these two plays in themselves and as they illuminate each other.  In the second week, we shall read Othello, focusing on the power of language to transform or at least manipulate human beings; Iago’s motives; evidence, proof, trials, innocence, and guilt; music and harmony; magic; and so forth. Course code: BASC80164 Literature

Notes

**Participants should read the entire play – carefully – in advance of the first meeting.** Particular passages for re-reading will be assigned at the end of Monday through Thursday’s discussions. The Signet edition of Othello is recommended.

This is an online course. More information and FAQ on online courses can be found here.