Blood Politics: Comparative Renaissance Drama

Catalog description

Blood is everywhere. From vampire shows to video games, our culture seems to be obsessed with it. The course examines the power of blood in the early modern period as a figure that continues to capture our imagination, not only as a marker of racial, religious, and sexual difference and desire, but also as a dramatic player in its own right. How does a politics of blood appear on stage when populations are being expelled and colonized for reasons (mis)understood in terms of blood? In the course of trying to answer this and other questions of blood, we will read plays by Shakespeare, Webster, Kyd, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calder?e la Barca. Topics include honor, revenge, purity, the body, sexuality, conversion, and death. (ENGL-PRE)