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Instructors: Mirjam Haas
Event type:
Seminar/proseminar
Displayed in timetable as:
05.874.123
Hours per week:
2
Credits:
6,0
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
- | 45
Contents:
Duch Euen now thou said’st,
Thou wast a tombe-maker?
Bos. ’T was to bring you
By degrees to mortification : Listen.
Hearke, now euery thing is still,
The Schritch-Owle, and the whistler shrill,
Call upon our Dame,aloud,
And bid her quickly don her shrowd :
[…]
’Tis now fulltide, ’tweene night,and day,
End your groane,and come away. (Webster, Duchess K1v-K2r)
In this course, we will explore the sounds in and the sounding of early modern drama. We will explore the sound cues embedded into early modern printed texts – as in the example above, the calls to “Listen” and to “Hearke”, the onomatopoeia (e.g. “groane”), or the italics that mark the change to song. What role is it that sound – especially the sound(s) of the human voice – plays in early modern drama? We will also explore how modern stage and radio performances realise these sound cues: is there an extra-long pause after the “Listen.”? If so, does silence – and listening – literally become part of the soundscape of the performance and our experience of it? Do we notice the change to a rhymed form in the performed text? Does the tone change? Is there a “Schritch-Owl” in the background?
Recommended reading list:
The primary texts we will be reading are John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (first performed 1612-13, earliest text 1623) and John Lyly’s The Woman in the Moon (first performed in the 1580ies or early 1590ies, earliest text 1597). Recommended editions to buy are the Manchester UP one for The Woman (edited by Leah Scragg) and the New Mermaid’s edition for The Duchess (edited by Brian Gibbons) – you can freely access the latter via the university network and Drama Online (https://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/home). In class, however, we will mainly work with the early modern texts which are freely available via EEBO (https://www.proquest.com/eebo) – but they are a lot harder to read as the print is 400 years old, so I strongly recommend getting a hold of modern editions for a first reading! One of the performances of The Duchess is currently available here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000xsj1 – more are to be found on Drama Online.
The most important research literature we will cover is Jennifer Richards’ Voices and Books in the English Renaissance (2019) and David Crystal’s Think on My Words (2008).
Additional information:
Towards the end of the semester, all students will work on an independent self-chosen sound and/in literature project – depending on the size of the group, either in pairs or on their own.
This seminar is for you want to learn more about theatre, particularly early modern drama, between page and stage, if you are curious about and open to less traditional forms of close reading (i.e. close listening), and if you have an interest in rhetoric and looking at performative texts and listening to performances with great attention and detail.
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