WGS.510
Literary Interpretation: Virginia Woolf's Shakespeare
Spring 2001
Topics
- Introduction.
- A Room of One’s Own. Chap. 1-3.
- A Room of One’s Own. Chap. 4-6.
- Antony and Cleopatra .
- Discussion of the use of other texts in Room , including Antony and Cleopatra and possible reports on some of the following: As You Like It ; Aphra Behn’s poems and The Rover ; Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice ; Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre ; and poems by Christina Rosetti and Alfred Lord Tennyson.
- Mrs. Dalloway .
- _Cymbeline.
- Report on “Virginia Woolf as Shakespeare’s Sister: Chapters in a Woman Writer’s Autobiography,” by Christine Froula (in Women’s Re-visions of Shakespeare , Marianne Novy, ed.): pp. 123-142.
- Orlando. Chap. 1-3.
- Report on Sir Thomas Browne, “Hydrotaphia.”
- Orlando. Chap. 4-6.
- Orlando .
- To the Lighthouse , “The Window.”
- To the Lighthouse , “Time Passes.” Selected Shakespeare sonnets.
- The Winter’s Tale and To the Lighthouse .
- Research day: Work in library.
- The Waves.
- _The Waves.
- Three Guineas.
- Between the Acts.
- Between the Acts . Student paper reports.
- Back to A Room of One’s Own . Student paper reports.
Readings
- Shakespeare, William. Antony and Cleopatra . Edited by Michael Neill. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
- Shakespeare, William. Cymbeline . Edited by Roger Warren. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
- Shakespeare, William. Othello . Edited by Norman Sanders. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
- Shakespeare, William. The Winter’s Tale . Edited by Stephen Orgel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
- Woolf, Virginia. Between the Acts . New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1941.
- Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, 1997 [1925].
- Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich 1973 [1928].
- Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own . New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1989 [1929].
- Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas . New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1938.
- Woolf, Virginia. To The Lighthouse . San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1989 [1927].
- Woolf, Virginia. The Waves . New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1978 [1931].
- Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice . Edited by Donald Gray. New York: W.W. Norton, 1993.
- Behn, Aphra. The Rover . London: Methuen Drama, 1993.
- Behn, Aphra. Selected poems . Edited by Malcolm Hicks. Manchester: Fyfield, 1993.
- Brooke, Rupert. The Collected Poems . London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1987.
- Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre . Edited by Richard J. Dunn. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001.
- Callaghan, Dympna. “‘Othello was a White Man’: Properties of Race on Shakespeare’s Stage.” In Alternative Shakespeares . Vol. 2. Edited by Terence Hawkes. London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 192-215.
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Coleridge’s criticism of Shakespeare . Edited by R.A. Foakes. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989.
- Froula, Christine. “Virginia Woolf as Shakespeare’s Sister: Chapters in a Woman Writer’s Autobiography.” In Women’s Re-visions of Shakespeare . Edited by Marianne Novy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990, pp. 123-142.
- Hussey, Mark. “Living in a War Zone: An Introduction to Virginia Woolf as a War Novelist.” In Virginia Woolf and War: Fiction, Reality, and Myth . Edited by Mark Hussey.Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1991.
- Johnson. Samuel. Johnson on Shakespeare: Essays and Notes Selected and Set Forth . London: Oxford University Press, 1968.
- Jones, Ann Rosalind. “Writing the Body: Toward an Understanding of l’Écriture féminine.” In The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, and Theory . Edited by Elaine Showalter. New York: Pantheon, 1985, pp. 361-377.
- Keats, John. Complete Poems and Selected Letters . New York: Modern Library, 2001.
- Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992.
- Owen, Wilfred. “Mental Cases,” “Dulce et Decorum est,” and “Strange Meeting.” In The Complete Poems and Fragments . Edited by Jon Stallworthy. New York: W.W. Norton, 1984.
- Pope, Alexander. Selections . Edited by Pat Rogers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
- Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” In Blood, Bread, and Poetry . New York: Norton, 1986, pp. 23-75.
- Rich, Adrienne. “The Domestication of Motherhood,” “Mother and Son, Woman and Man,” and “Motherhood and Daughterhood.” In Of Woman Born . New York: Norton, 1976, pp. 110-127, 186-217, 218-255.
- Rossetti, Christina. The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti . Edited by R. W. Crump. 3 vols. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979-1990.
- Sassoon, Siegfried. The War Poems . London: Faber and Faber, 1983.
- Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain . New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 3-23, 60-157.
- Sedgwick, Eve. Between Men . New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
- Shakespeare, William. As You Like It . Edited by Michael Hattaway. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
- Smith, Barbara. “Racism and Women’s Studies,” and “Healing the Great Divide.” In The Truth That Never Hurts . New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998.
- Tennyson, Alfred, Lord. Selected Poems . Edited by Aidan Day. New York: Penguin , 1991.
- Usui, Masami. “The Female Victims of War in Mrs. Dalloway .” In Virginia Woolf and War: Fiction, Reality, and Myth . Edited by Mark Hussey.Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1991.
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗Historical OpenCourseWare
- 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.