Early Modern Drama

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

In this course we will explore early modern English drama through representations of Jews and Muslims to understand how the people of these faiths were understood in relation to each other and to Christianity. While Jews and Muslims are often seen in conflict today, in early modern England, they were often perceived to be in cooperation with each other, sometimes against Christians. There are also ways in which Jews and Muslims were seen as radically different from each other. Interestingly, while we tend to understand race and religion as different identity categories today, in earlier periods race and religion were sometimes conflated. In order to try to understand the logic underlying these representations, we will gain historical perspective on relations between Christians, Muslims and Jews by reading current scholarship on the subject as well as primary non-literary texts from the period. How do Christians’ relations with the powerful Ottoman empire influence early modern views of Muslims? Why are Jews a subject of interest when they were officially banned from living in England at the time? How is race understood in the period and why is it linked to religion? How does the unsettling experience of the English Reformation influence ideas about religious truth, tolerance and conversion, and to what extent are other religions considered in these contexts?