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Learning from the Past: Drama, Science, Performance >> Content Detail



Study Materials



Readings

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This page lists the reading assignments per class session, followed by a bibliography with complete citations for all works.



Reading Assignments



LEC #TOPICSREADINGS
1

Introduction — to an experiment and a century.

Genesis meets Galileo.

Read Brecht's Galileo. [*Note what is meant by "read" in relation to playscripts, see the Syllabus.]

Read Jonathan Baker's notes on History of Cosmology, and compare to the chapter by Lovejoy.

2Discussion of Brecht's Galileo and cosmology.

Read Dunn on "The Puritan Revolution" and skim his "The Century of Genius" chapter.

Read selections from Eugen Weber (Grimmelshausen, Mun, Descartes, Newton, Locke, and Hobbes).

3Guest speaker: Anne McCants, historian.

Read the common assignment (i.e. Burton pp. 147-8 and 154-9, Synopsis of Descartes' Meditations, etc.).

Students will also be divided into four groups and given additional pages from one of these authors (Bacon, Burton, Descartes and Boyle), to be read in greater depth and with greater care. The four groups will then lead the discussion of "their" author.

Read Barzun's "The Invisible College" (pp. 192-207) and Margaret Jacob (pp. 15-72).

4Four men of "science": Bacon, Burton, Descartes and Boyle.

Read both Shakespeare's King Lear and Nahum Tate's History of King Lear.

Read Chapter 9 in Brockett's History of the Theater and Janette Dillon's "Theatre and Controversy 1603-1642."

5Discussion of King LearRead Ben Jonson's masque "Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at Court," and Lindley's chapter on the court masque.
6Library research; Scenework from two versions of King Lear and Jonson's masque
7Special event: Screening of the film Stage Beauty.
8Perform scenes from Ben Jonson's masque and from the two Lears.Read Ford's Tis Pity She's a Whore and secondary material about Caroline dramatic and theatrical history by Brockett, Saunders, and Butler ("Theater and Crisis.")
9More Lears, and 'Tis Pity She's A Whore.
10Tis Pity (cont.); Paper brainstorming.Read chapters from Wallington's World and Christopher Hill.
11Student presentations
12Student presentations (cont.)
13Guest speaker Malcolm Smuts, historian.Chapters by Steven Shapin.
14Conclude student presentations
15Guest lecture by Dean Bob Silbey, Chemistry.Read Light Shining in Buckinghamshire.
16

Session with playwright Laura Harrington.

Writing workshop 1

17Group work on timelines; Light Shining in Buckinghamshire
18Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (cont.)
19Performance work with Laura Harrington
20

Performance work

Writing workshop 2

21Performance work (cont.)
22Performance work (cont.)
23Performance work (cont.)
24Performance of staged reading to an invited audience
25Browne's "Hydriotaphia" and Kushner's Hydriotaphia.Read Browne's "Hydriotaphia" and Kushner's Hydriotaphia.
26Aphra Behn, The Rover.Read Behn's The Rover.
27Wrap-up



Required Texts


Amazon logo Behn, Aphra. "The Rover." In The Rover and Other Plays. Edited by Jane Spenser. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 9780192834515.

Amazon logo Brecht, Bertolt. The Life of Galileo. Translated by R. Manheim and J. Willett. New York, NY: Arcade Publishing, 1994. ISBN: 9781559702546.

Amazon logo Churchill, Caryl. "Light Shining in Buckinghamshire." Plays: One. London, UK: Methuen, 1985. ISBN: 9780413566706.

Amazon logo Ford, John. 'Tis Pity She's a Whore and Other Plays. Edited by Marion Lomax. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780192834492.

Amazon logo Kushner, Tony. Death and Taxes: Hydriotaphia and Other Plays. New York, NY: Theatre Communications Group, 2000. ISBN: 9781559361569.

Amazon logo Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Edited by R. A. Foakes. London, UK: Arden Shakespeare, 1997. ISBN: 9780174434603.



Other Assigned Readings


Amazon logo Lovejoy, Arthur. "The Principle of Plenitude and the New Cosmography." In The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976 (reprint). ISBN: 9780674361539.

Weber, Eugen, ed. Compilation of writings by Grimmelshausen, Mun, Descartes, Newton, Locke, and Hobbes, from "The Seventeenth Century." Chapter IV in The Western Tradition: From the Renaissance to the Atomic Age. Boston, MA: D.C. Heath & Co., 1959, pp. 362-397 and 410-423.

Amazon logo Parry, Graham. Selections from The Seventeenth Century: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, 1603-1700. Boston, MA: Longman, 1989. ISBN: 9780582493766.

Amazon logo Milling, Jane, and Peter Thomson, eds. Selections in The Cambridge History of British Theatre. Vol. 1, Origins to 1660. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780521650403.

  • Butler, Martin. "The Condition of the Theatres in 1642."
  • Clare, Janet. "Theatre and Commonwealth."
  • Dillon, Janette. "Theatre and Controversy, 1603-1642."
  • Knutson, Roslyn L. "Working Playwrights, 1580-1642."
  • Lindley, David. "The Stuart Masque and its Makers."
  • Milling, Jane. "The Development of a Professional Theatre, 1540-1660."

Baker, Jonathan. Notes on History of Cosmology (PDF). (Courtesy of Jonathan Baker. Used with permission.)

Amazon logo Jacob, Margaret C. Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780195082203.

Tate, Nahum. The History of King Lear.

Descartes, Rene. Selections from Meditations. (Download from filepedia.org)

Amazon logo 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.

Burton, Robert. Selections from Anatomy of Melancholy. (Download from Project Gutenberg)

Amazon logo Boyle, Robert. Selections from The Sceptical Chymist. Chestnut Hill, MA: Adamant Media Corp, 2001. ISBN: 9780543916587.

Bacon, Sir Francis. Selections from various works.

Browne, Sir Thomas. Hydriotaphia.

Amazon logo Shapin, Steven. "The Philosopher and the Chicken: On the Dietetics of Disembodied Knowledge." In Science Incarnate: Historical Embodiments of Natural Knowledge. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780226470146.

———. "Who Was Robert Boyle?" Chapter 4 in A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780226750194.

Prynne, William. Histrio-mastix.



Other References




Primary Sources


Marvell, A. "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland." (PDF)

Amazon logo Jonson, Ben. "Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at Court." In Ben Jonson's Plays and Masques. Edited by Robert M. Adams. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1979. ISBN: 9780393090352.

Amazon logo Seaver, Paul S. Wallington's World. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985, preface and chapters 1 and 2. ISBN: 9780804714327.

Boyle, Robert. Excerpt from "A Defense of the Doctrine Touching the Spring and Weight of the Air." Oxford England, 1662. (PDF)



History of Theater


Amazon logo 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.

Amazon logo 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.

Amazon logo Sanders, Julie. "Introductory Biographical and Historical Outline." Chapter 1 in Caroline Drama. Tavistock, UK: Northcote House, 1999. ISBN: 9780746308776.

Amazon logo Butler, Martin. Theatre and Crisis: 1632-1642. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984, chapters 1-3. ISBN: 9780521246323.

Amazon logo Brockett, Oscar G., and Franklin J. Hildy. "English Theatre to 1642," and "English Theatre to 1800." Chapters 5 and 9 in History of the Theater. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 2003. ISBN: 9780205358786.



Sociopolitical History


Amazon logo Morton, A. L. "Religion and Politics in the English Revolution." In The World of the Ranters. London, UK: Laurence and Wishart, 1970. ISBN: 9780853152200.

Amazon logo Hill, Christopher. "Religion and Ideas," and "Appendices A-D." Chapter 10 in The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1982, pp. 1-10. ISBN: 9780393300161.

Amazon logo ———. The World Turned Upside Down. New York, NY: Penguin, 1984, chapters 1 and 2. ISBN: 9780140137323.

Amazon logo Ridley, Jasper. "Henry VIII and the Religious Revolution." Chapter 8 in The History of England. London, UK: Routledge, 1981. ISBN: 9780710007940.

Smuts, Malcom. "Rethinking the Political Context."



History of Science


Amazon logo Keller, Evelyn Fox. "Spirit and Reason at the Birth of Modern Science." In Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780300065954.

Amazon logo 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.



Social Science


Amazon logo 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.

Amazon logo 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.


 








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