Università Roma Tre

Course Programme: Science and Politics in Shakespeare’s Works (12 CFU- II SEMESTRE)

Shakespeare’s modernity resides in the highly cognitive potential of his language and in the way different paradigms overlap in his works, in a phase in which newly problematized models of cognition brought about by the new science – or “the new philosophy” as John Donne called it – were deeply complicating the way human beings saw themselves and the universe. How is this revolutionized epistemic framework catalyzed in Shakespeare’s art? And how is it interwoven with politics in his works? The course will deal with such a set of questions. Shakespearean chosen works: Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra, The Rape of Lucrece

Teaching Materials:
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, edizione Arden; Coriolanus, edizione Arden; The Rape of Lucrece, in Shakespeare’s Poems (qualsiasi edizione); Antony and Cleopatra, edizione Arden.
M. Del Sapio Garbero, ed., Shakespeare and the New Science in Early Modern Culture / Shakespeare e la nuova scienza nella cultura early modern, Pisa, Pacini, 2016.
M. Del Sapio Garbero, co-ed., Questioning Bodies in Shakespeare’s Rome, Gӧttingen, V&R Unipress, 2010.
M. Del Sapio Garbero, “Disowning the Bond: Coriolanus’s Forgetful Humanism”, in M. Marrapodi, ed., Shakespeare and the Italian Renaissance. Appropriation, Transformation, Opposition, Farnham and Burlington, Ashgate, 2014, pp.73-91.
Advised reading:
Giorgio Melchiori, Shakespeare, Laterza, 1994