EDUC06018 2018 Drama Studies: An Introduction

Discuss the historical contexts of Dramatic Literature: Elizabethian to the Modern Period

Identify Key Dramatic Trends and Forms

Demonstrate the relationships between text and society

Evaluate the theatrical event in theory and in practice

This module will be taught using workshops, seminars and EBL strategies.

Continuous assessment - project

Project 60%

Title

Defining Dramatic Culture to the Modern Age 1650-1950

The aim of the project will be to complicate the students understanding of how dramatic literature is produced and received and understood from Elizabethian to the Modern Period.

Through engaging with each dramatic period, trends, movements and issues the student will focus in on key analytical concepts to interrogate the relationship between  text and their historical contexts

In so the student (as a group project) will engage with the process of producing a 'review' of key texts and performance from a self-selected dramatic period.  

End of Term Essay 40%

Repeat requirements will depend on failed components. 

Discuss the historical contexts of drama.

Survey the history of dramatic literature with particular emphasis on key periods from the 16th century on, including Jacobean/Elizabethan, Augustan, Romantic, Victorian and Modernist dramatic literature. Building from the work introduced in Texts, Contexts and Subtexts, the student will be able to broadly classify important dramatic development along with key playwrights writing in the period. The student will be able to recognise how the dramatic text ‘lives’ in relation to and in tension with historical and cultural contexts.

We will study the work of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Juana Inez de la Cruz, The Commedia dell Arte Sheridan, Boucicault, Ibsen, Synge,  O' Casey, Robins, Brecht, Duras and Beckett among others, with a focus on situating their works in their historical contexts.

Identify Dramatic Trends and Forms

The student will be able to identify key dramatic forms and genres across the periods for the module. The student will be able to understand how classification of dramatic literature is defined and how that which constitutes dramatic form has changed over time. The student will be able to identify the relationship between prevailing ideas in dramatic literature at a given moment in history and the prevalent dramatic forms in the time along with the de-stabilisation of a definite sense of when dramatic trends and forms begin and end. The student will also be able to demonstrate an understanding of the complex relationship between Elizabethan, Romanticism, Victorian and Modernism dramatic literature and its contexts

Demonstrate the relationships between text and society

The student will explore the complex interactions between the dramatic text and its contexts through the foci of dramatic trends, movements’ texts and issues within each period. The student will demonstrate foundational analytical skills to so as to critically engage with dramatic literature and its connection to diverse social, economic, political and cultural aspects of each period.

Evaluate the theatrical event in theory and in practice

The student will be able to analyse and discuss main dramatic forms and genres within a selected period understood within its socio-political and cultural contexts. In relationship to the sister module ‘Culture, Performance and Representation’, the student will analyse in detail the key features of the period including trends, contexts, playwrights and audience. The student will be able to demonstrate critical, imaginative and practical engagement with key texts of the moment and to discuss the relationship between ideas of the dramatic text and performance text within across time.