In this course, we are going to study one of Shakespeare’s most popular tragedies, i.e. Romeo and Juliet. We will look at the play as part of Renaissance popular culture in its own right as well as how it is dealt with in popular culture of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. You will conduct close readings of the play in order to understand plotlines, motifs, and characters that have been at the core of these plays’ popularity. We will approach the tragedy playfully at times and sketch its legacy in contemporary anglophone culture(s). Overall, our focus will be on the character of Juliet. While in the past, Romeo has been at the center of attention when it comes to popular representations, recent cultural productions teem with playful encounters with Juliet. For understanding how contemporary culture engages with Juliet, we will study all sorts of genre and media such as film, comics, mass market fiction, rock/pop music, video games, social media, and the like in different cultural settings (i.e. UK, India, USA, Canada, Germany etc.). This approach will deepen our understanding of Shakespearean drama itself as well as popular culture’s negotiation, embrace, and contestation of a literary figure that will allow us insights into contemporary culture’s conceptions of gender/womanhood and cultural identity more broadly speaking.
- Lehrende:r: Julia Nitz