| From beginning of his career, in The Comedy of Errors, to the end, in Pericles and The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare was engaged in varying degrees with the writings and life of Paul. A wide range of plays explore and often challenge Pauline ideas about the role of women in society, the nature of marital relations, and the regulation of human sexuality, that were also being challenged and re-ordered in early modern England. Moreover, these plays often represent cultural and ideological encounters between Christian, patriarchal, and Eurocentric social values originally grounded on Paul's teachings, and pre-Christian, matriarchal, and non-European spaces and practices that were being (re-)discovered through early modern trade and exploration, as well as through classical sources. This seminar will study how Shakespeare represents and questions Pauline social teachings and historical spaces in these plays. Our syllabus will include one apocryphal Shakespeare play, Arden of Faversham. |
