Literary criticism discussing the role of gossip in Richard Sheridan's School for Scandal.
This 6-unit subject gives students the opportunity to immerse themselves in the poetry of two living Nobel Laureates: the Caribbean poet, Derek Walcott, and the Northern-Irish poet, Seamus Heaney. We will begin and end the semester with their magnificent epic works: Heaney's translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, and Walcott's Omeros (a modern epic set in the West Indies). Between these major narrative poems, we will read a rich selection of their shorter poems, as well as some of their reflections in prose on what poetry does, on what other poets do, and what it means to write in English from the historical and political situation of Northern Ireland (for Heaney) or the Caribbean (for Walcott).
EBook includes a bibliography of translations, glossary of proper names,
introduction and full text.
Book review publications (Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly) and social cataloguing websites (GoodReads, LibraryThing) categorize the books they review into genres. Fiction and Nonfiction are the broadest categories. The more specialized categories include Mystery, Children's Books, and Poetry. This public domain anthology includes a range of books in these various genres for novice critics to practice the reviewer's craft.
This course explores the ways in which various American artists view race and class as performed or performable identities. Discussions will focus on some of the following questions: What does it mean to act black, white, privileged, or underprivileged? What do these artists suggest are the implications of performing (indeed playing at or with) racial identity, ethnicity, gender, and class status? How and why are race and class status often conflated in these performances?
This course explores the form, content, and historical context of various works of fiction specifically through the thematic lens of "dysfunctional families." We will focus primarily on questions pertaining to the structure, language, story, and characters of these fictional works.
How do you read a poem? Intuition is not the only answer. In this class, we will investigate some of the formal tools poets use—meter, sound, syntax, word-choice, and other properties of language—as well as exploring a range of approaches to reading poetry, from the old (memorization and reading out loud) to the new (digitally enabled visualization and annotation). We will use readings available online via the generosity of the Poetry Foundation and the Academy of American Poets. We will also think collectively about how to approach difficult poems.
Doctoral student seminar covering current topics related to operations research not otherwise included in the curriculum. In keeping with the tradition of the last twenty-some years, the Readings in Optimization seminar will focus on an advanced topic of interest to a portion of the MIT optimization community: randomized methods for deterministic optimization. In contrast to conventional optimization algorithms whose iterates are computed and analyzed deterministically, randomized methods rely on stochastic processes and random number/vector generation as part of the algorithm and/or its analysis. In the seminar, we will study some very recent papers on this topic, many by MIT faculty, as well as some older papers from the existing literature that are only now receiving attention.
European history from the fourteenth through the sixteenth century. Consideration of political, social, artistic, and scientific developments during this period of transition to the modern world. Examines the connections between Renaissance Humanism and the Protestant and Catholic reform movements of the sixteenth century. Studies works by Petrarch, Machiavelli, Brunelleschi, Leonardo, Erasmus, More, Luther, and Montaigne. The "Renaissance" as a phenomenon in European history is best understood as a series of social, political, and cultural responses to an intellectual trend which began in Italy in the fourteenth century. This intellectual tendency, known as humanism, or the studia humanitatis, was at the heart of developments in literature, the arts, the sciences, religion, and government for almost three hundred years. In this class, we will highlight the history of humanism, but we will also study religious reformations, high politics, the agrarian world, and European conquest and expansion abroad in the period.
" The Renaissance has justly become both famous and notorious as an age of discovery, and its voyages took place in many realms. This semester, we will read several history making narratives of early modern travel: first-hand accounts of discovery, captivity, conquest, or cultural encounter. As Europeans came to acquire experience of unfamiliar places, literary texts of the period began to assimilate this experience by describing imagined voyages across real or fantastic landscapes. Finally, voyages of exploration served Renaissance writers as a metaphor: for intellectual inquiry, for spiritual development, or for the pursuit of love. Among the literary genres sampled this semester will be sonnets, plays, prose narratives, utopias, and chivalric romance. Authors and travellers will include Francis Petrarch, Amerigo Vespucci, Thomas More, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, HernĚÁn CortĚŠs, John Donne, Francis Drake, Mary Rowlandson, Francis Bacon."
Robert Herrick biography and selected works including "Upon Julia's Clothes" and "Corinna's Going A-Maying"
Close readings of the major British Romantic poets (Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Scott, Shelley, Keats), perhaps including some of the period's important fiction writers (e.g. Mary Shelley, Walter Scott). Some attention to literary and historical context. Lecture/discussion; at least two papers.
LibriVox recording of The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan.Richard Brinsley Sheridan's comedy was first performed in 1777 and focuses on the intrigues and scandals of the British upper classes. Lady Sneerwell wants to marry Charles Surface, while Joseph Surface wants to marry Maria, an heiress and ward of Sir Peter Teazle. Maria, however, prefers Charles over Joseph. In order to detach her from Charles, Lady Sneerwell and Joseph spread rumors about an affair between Charles and Lady Teazle, Sir Peter's new young wife. Meanwhile, Sir Oliver Surface, newly returned from the East Indies, assumes various disguises to test his nephews' characters. Misunderstandings, mistaken identities, gossip, and bad behavior abound in this uproarious comedy. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)CastNarrator/Lady Teazle/Mr. Careless: Elizabeth KlettLady Sneerwell: Arielle LipshawMr. Snake/First Gentleman: Ernst PattynamaServant/Second Gentleman: Caprisha PageJoseph Surface: mbMaria/Maid: Charlotte DuckettMrs. Candour: Libby GohnMr. Crabtree/Sir Harry Bumper: Alan MapstoneSir Benjamin Backbite: Robin KingSir Peter Teazle: Algy PugRowley: Chuck WilliamsonSir Oliver Surface: ToddMr. Moses: David OlsonTrip: Amanda FridayCharles Surface: DublinGothicAudio edited by Elizabeth KlettFor further information, including links to online text, reader information, RSS feeds, CD cover or other formats (if available), please go to the LibriVox catalog page for this recording.For more free audio books, or to become a volunteer reader, please visit LibriVox.org.Download M4B(81MB)
Full text
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database is a freely available online resource designed to help students and researchers locate secondary sources for the study of the science fiction and fantasy and associated genres. These include: historical material; books; articles; news reports; interviews; film reviews; commentary; and fan writing. It is housed at Texas A&M University, and continually being updated with new entries.
Investigates relationships between the two media, including film adaptations as well as works linked by genre, topic, and style. Explores how artworks challenge and cross cultural, political, and aesthetic boundaries. Topic for Fall: Shakespeare, Film, and Media. Meets with CMS.840, but assignments differ. Filmed Shakespeare began in 1899, with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree performing the death scene from King John for the camera. Sarah Bernhardt, who had played Hamlet a number of times in her long career, filmed the duel scene for the Paris Exposition of 1900. In the era of silent film (1895-1929) several hundred Shakespeare films were made in England, France Germany and the United States, Even without the spoken word, Shakespeare was popular in the new medium. The first half-century of sound included many of the most highly regarded Shakespeare films, among them -- Laurence Olivier's Hamlet and Henry V, Orson Welles' Othello and Chimes at Midnight, Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, Polanski's Macbeth and Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. We are now in the midst of an extremely rich and varied period for Shakespeare on film which began with the release of Kenneth Branagh's Henry V in 1989 and includes such films as Richard Loncraine's Richard III, Julie Taymor's Titus, Zeffirelli and Almereyda's Hamlet films, Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, and Shakespeare in Love. The phenomenon of filmed Shakespeare raises many questions for literary and media studies about adaptation, authorship, the status of "classic" texts and their variant forms, the role of Shakespeare in youth and popular culture, and the transition from manuscript, book and stage to the modern medium of film and its recent digitally inflected forms. Most of our work will involve individual and group analysis of the "film text" -- that is, of specific sequences in the films, aided by videotape, DVD, the Shakespeare Electronic Archive (http://shea.mit.edu), and some of the software tools for video annoatation developed by the MIT Shakespeare Project under the MIT-Microsoft iCampus Initiative. We will study the films as works of art in their own right, and try to understand the means -- literary, dramatic, performative, cinematic -- by which they engage audiences and create meaning. With Shakespeare film as example, we will discuss how stories cross time, culture and media, and reflect on the benefits as well as the limitations of such migration. The class will be conducted as a structured discussion, punctuated by student presentations and "mini-lectures" by the instructor. Students will introduce discussions, prepare clips and examples, and the major "written" work will take the form of presentations to the class and multimedia annotations as well as conventional short essays. The methodological bias of the class is close "reading" of both text and film. This is a class in which your insights will form a major part of the work and will be the basis of a large fraction of class discussion. You will need to read carefully, to watch and listen to the films carefully, and develop effective ways of conveying your ideas to the class.
Shakespeare's sonnets
Chapter detailing Sir Philip Sidney's sonnet series Astrophel and Stella
Astrophil and Stella
Examines the experiences of ordinary Chinese people as they lived through tumultous change in the twentieth-century. Class discussion focuses on personal memoirs and films. Includes comparisons of the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. 21F.991 is for students pursuing a minor in Chinese; students complete assignments in Chinese.