Module code: IL903
Convenor: Dr Paul Prescott
Email: P.Prescott@warwick.ac.uk
Location: Warwick

Summary

This core module builds on the work of the first semester by focusing on the transformations effected on Shakespeare’s texts by a range of translational practices. It aims to exploit Warwick’s strengths in performance criticism, literary translation and active pedagogy, and is designed to allow students to experiment, as practitioners, with these different models of translation. These issues of translation are ‘global’ in the sense that they are common to all cultures in which Shakespeare is performed, adapted, reviewed, translated and taught. Schmidt’s Shakespeare-Lexicon identifies three senses in which Shakespeare used the word ‘translate’ in his plays: 1) to transform or change; 2) to render into another language; 3) to interpret or explain. This module explores the overlaps and productive tensions between these senses; in doing so, it offers students a number of models for how they might develop their own practice as ‘translators’ of Shakespeare.

Assessment

This module will be assessed by a 5000-word essay, due 10 May 2017.

Written feedback and provisional marks for assignments which are subject to double marking and subject to External Examiner sampling will be returned to students within 20 working days of submission.

Sample syallbus (subject to change)

Weeks 1 - 2: Adaptation and Appropriation

Weeks 3 - 4: Translation

Weeks 5 - 8: Shakespeare in Brazil

Week 9: Non-verbal Shakespeare

Week 10: Summary