21L.016
Gods and Mortals
Introduces students to moral and philosophical questions that emerge from the study of pre-modern literature, such as how humans have grappled with life on earth and negotiated their relationships with the known and unknown, nature and the cosmos, past and future, the physical and the metaphysical, life and death, one another, and the divine. Focuses on careful reading of major works and authors, including selections from Sappho's lyric poems, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Augustine's Confessions, and Dante's Inferno. Develops skills in close reading and in persuasive and personal analytical writing. Students have the opportunity to present on their readings and research in a variety of forms.
Spring 2009 · Learning from the Past: Drama, Science, Performance
Topics
- Introduction—to an experiment and a century. Genesis meets Galileo
- Discussion of Brecht’s Galileo
- Contextualizing Galileo ; varieties of history, improvisatory cosmologies
- A Tale of Two Lears
- Special event: evening film screening of Stage Beauty (Dir. Richard Eyre, 2004)
- Scenes read in class, more discussion of two versions of Lear within their theatrical context
- Five “men of science”: Bacon, Burton, Descartes, Boyle and Hobbes. Expert group presentations on each of these natural philosophers
- The Roman Actor (performed 1626, published 1629)
- ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore (written late 1620s; published 1633)
- Paper writing: discussion of thesis statements based on your play-reading. Scene work
- The Antipodes (c. 1636, printed 1640)
- Reflections upon your essays, historical meltdown, and what came after; with reference to The Broken Heart, The Cardinal, The Rover, The Enchanted Island
- The Puritan Revolution. Discussion of research and extensive essay composition
- Light Shining in Buckinghamshire
- Special event: theatrical field trip to see Richard Goodwin’s “Two Men of Florence” at the Huntington Theater Company
- Playwriting, day one
- Playwriting, day two
- Sharing of documents and paper ideas
- Sharing of documents and paper ideas (cont.)
- The Country Wife
- Poetry of the seventeenth century
- Individual meetings with instructors
- Tony Kushner’s Hydriotaphia
- Discussion of your learning and sharing of your expertise
- Dramatic reading of selections from Adriano Shaplin’s The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes
- Dramatic reading from The Virtuoso and conclusions
Readings
- Brecht, Bertolt. The Life of Galileo . Translated by R. Manheim and J. Willett. New York, NY: Arcade Publishing, 1994. ISBN: 9781559702546.
- Jacob, Margaret C. “The New Science and Its New Audience.” Chapter 1 in Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780195082203.
- Hill, Christopher. “Introduction,” and “Narrative of Events.” In The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714 . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1982, pp. 1-10. ISBN: 9780393300161.
- Bucholz, Robert, and Newton Key. “The Early Stuarts and the Three Kingdoms, 1603-1642.” Chapter 7 in Early Modern Englad 1485-1714: A Narrative History . pp. 201-237.
- For “prequel” knowledge of the 16th-century, look at Bucholz and Key, Chapter 6, “Merrie Olde England? ca. 1603.” pp. 152-200.
- To sample the writing of Galileo, see Kreis, Steven. “Galileo, The Starry Messenger (1610).” The History Guide: Lectures on Early Modern European History .
- Passages written by Simplicissimus, Thomas Mun, and Thomas Hobbes. In “The Seventeenth Century.” Chapter IV in The Western Tradition: From the Renaissance to the Atomic Age . Edited by Eugen Weber. Boston, MA: D.C. Heath & Co., 1959, pp. 362-421.
- \> - Chapter 4: Munns, Jessica. “Theatrical Culture 1: Politics and Theatre.” \> - Chapter 5: Winn, James A.“Theatrical Culture 2: Theatre and Music.”
- Tate, Nahum. The History of King Lear .
- Timeline examples
- General year-by-year: Grun, Bernard. The Timetables of History: A Horizontal Linkage of People and Events . 4th revised ed. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2005. ISBN: 9780743270038. Years 1598-1689.
- History and culture: Daems, Jim. “Chronology of Key Historical and Cultural Events.” In Seventeenth-Century Literature and Culture . New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006, pp. 104-115. ISBN: 9780826486592.
- Selections in The Oxford Illustrated History of Shakespeare on Stage . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780192802132.
- Jacob, Margaret C. “The Cultural Meaning of Cartesianism: From the Self to Nature (and Back to the State)” and “Science in the Crucible of the English Revolution.” Chapters 2 and 3 in Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780195082203.
- Bacon, Sir Francis. “Part L. Of Studies” from The Essayes or Consels (1625); and Preface through Part XCIX and Part CXXX from The New Organon . In Francis Bacon: A Selection of his Works . New York, NY: Macmillan, 1977 (reprint). ISBN: 9780024245304.
- Boyle, Robert. Selections from The Sceptical Chymist . Chestnut Hill, MA: Adamant Media Corp, 2001. ISBN: 9780543916587.
- Descartes, René. Selections from Meditations on First Philosophy . Translated by Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1979. ISBN: 9780915144570.
- Brockett, Oscar G., and Franklin J. Hildy. “Engligh Theatre to 1642.” Excerpt from The History of the Theater . 9th ed. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 2003, pp. 113-114 and 126-137.
- Massinger, Philip. The Roman Actor . Royal Shakespeare Company Classics Series. London, UK: Nick Hern Books, 2002. ISBN: 9781854596970.
- Sanders, Julie. “Introductory Biographical and Historical Outline” and Chapter 1 “Caroline Drama and Dramatists.” In Caroline Drama . Tavistock, UK: Northcote House, 1999. ISBN: 9780746308776.
- Butler, Martin. Theatre and Crisis: 1632-1642 . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984, chapters 1-3. ISBN: 9780521246323.
- Behn, Aphra. “The Rover.” In The Rover and Other Plays . Edited by Jane Spenser. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 9780192834515.
- LEC #: 12 · TOPICS: Paper writing: discussion of thesis statements based on your play-reading. Scene work. · REQUIRED READINGS: Enjoy reading Richard Brome’s comedy The Antipodes . Edited by David Scott Kastan and Richard Proudfoot. London, UK: Nick Hern Books, 2000. ISBN: 9781854596031.
- Seaver, Paul S. Wallington’s World . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985, preface and chapters 1 and 2. ISBN: 9780804714327.
- Hill, Christopher. “Religion and Ideas.” Chapter 10 in The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714 . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1982, pp. 139-160. ISBN: 9780393300161.
- Morton, A. L. “Religion and Politics in the English Revolution.” Chapter I in The World of the Ranters . London, UK: Laurence and Wishart, 1970. ISBN: 9780853152200.
- Clare, Janet. “General Introduction: The Theatre and Cultural Revolution.” In Drama of the English Republic, 1649-1660 . Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780719044823.
- LEC #: 22 · TOPICS: The Country Wife · REQUIRED READINGS: Read the assigned (and any other) poems: lyrics and narrative odes by Andrew Marvell, John Milton, and Aphra Behn
- Selections from Shaplin, Adriano. The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes . Oberon Books, 2009. ISBN: 9781840028881.
- Dunn, Richard S. “The Puritan Revolution” and “The Century of Genius.” In The Age of Religious Wars, 1559-1689 . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1970. ISBN: 9780393098914.
- Hill, Christopher. Appendices A-D in The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714 . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1982, pp. 270-277. ISBN: 9780393300161.
- ———. The World Turned Upside Down . New York, NY: Penguin, 1984, chapters 1 and 2. ISBN: 9780140137323.
- Ridley, Jasper. “Henry VIII and the Religious Revolution.” Chapter 8 in The History of England . London, UK: Routledge, 1981. ISBN: 9780710007940.
- Keller, Evelyn Fox. “Spirit and Reason at the Birth of Modern Science.” In Reflections on Gender and Science . 10th anniversary ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780300065954.
- Wertheim, Margaret. “The Ascent of Mathematical Man.” Chapter 5 in Pythagoras’ Trousers: God, Physics, and the Gender Wars . New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997. ISBN: 9780393317244.
- Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences . New York, NY: Vintage Books/Knopf, 1973; foreward, preface, chapters 1 and 2. ISBN: 9780394719351.
- Shapin, Steven. “‘Who Was Then a Gentleman?’ Integrity and Gentle Identity in Early Modern England,” and “A Social History of Truth-Telling: Knowledge, Social Practice, and the Credibility of Gentlemenn.” Chapters 2 and 3 in A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780226750194.
- Brecht, Bertolt. The Life of Galileo . Translated by R. Manheim and J. Willett. New York, NY: Arcade Publishing, 1994. ISBN: 9781559702546.
- Massinger, Philip. The Roman Actor . Royal Shakespeare Company Classics Series. London, UK: Nick Hern Books, 2003. ISBN: 9781854596970.
- McMillin, Scott, ed. Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Comedy . 2nd ed. New York, NY: Norton Critical Editions, 1997. ISBN: 9780393963342.
Prerequisites & course information
Prereq: None U (Fall) 3-0-9 units. HASS-H; CI-H
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Spring 2009
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.