Assessment
This module is 100% assessed.
Students at Level 5 (i.e. Year 2) may choose assessment by either 2 x 4000-word essays or 1 x 4000-word essay and 1 x creative project with supporting essay of 1800 words.
Students at Level 6 (i.e. Years 3 and 4) may choose assessment by either 2 x 4500-word essays or 1 x 4500-word essay and 1 x creative project with supporting essay of 2000 words.
Assessment 1
Deadline for submission: Term 1, Week 11
Choose one of the following questions:
- Create an adaptation of Troilus and Cressida in any medium, along with a supporting essay (1800 words for Level 5 students, 2000 words for Level 6 students). Proposals must be submitted to the module tutor by the Monday of Term 1, Week 6. (Advice on creative projects can be found here.)
- “…one can never say, in an absolute sense, what Hamlet is, or where one can find it: there is no thing that will always, forever, be Hamlet” (Margaret Jane Kidnie, ‘Where is Hamlet?’).
Where is Troilus and Cressida? Discuss with reference to two or more texts. - Compare Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida with one or more of its sources. What are the effects of Shakespeare’s changes?
- Explore the ways in which changing ideas about sex and gender have affected the ways in which Troilus and Cressida has been re-made.
- Examine the impact of real-life warfare upon the ways in which Troilus and Cressida has been re-made.
- Can adaptation be a form of critique? Discuss with reference to two or more adaptations of the Troilus and Cressida story.
- How has Troilus and Cressida been adapted to changing audience tastes and expectations? Discuss with reference to two or more texts.
- How important is social and historical context in the study of Shakespeare’s cultural afterlife? Discuss with reference to Troilus and Cressida and at least one other text.
- Can we reconstruct performance from archival sources, and what can we learn from the attempt to do so? Discuss two or more examples, with particular reference to Troilus and Cressida.
- Discuss the ways in which a detailed knowledge of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida can enrich a reading of Olivia Manning’s The Great Fortune.
- Contrast the approaches to translation apparent in two or more translations of the Troilus and Cressida story.
- “Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes.
Those scraps are good deeds past, which are
Devoured as fast as they are made, forgot
As soon as done.” (Troilus and Cressida, 3.3.146-51)
To what extent does the history of the Troilus and Cressida story itself illustrate Ulysses’ speech about the effects of “envious and calumniating Time”? - Devise your own question in consultation with your tutor. Proposals must be submitted to the module tutor by the Monday of Term 1, Week 6.
Assessment 2
Deadline for submission: Term 3, Week 3
Devise an essay question or a creative project in consultation with your tutor. Deadline for proposals: Term 2, Week 6. Creative projects must be accompanied with a supporting essay (1800 words for Level 5 students, 2000 words for Level 6 students). Advice on creative projects can be found here.