Course description

Shakespeare is now seen as a classic of world literature, but how and why did his imaginative achievement escape its national confines? How did it become a privileged place for a variety of writers, artists, and composers (many of them non-anglophone) for thinking through what constitutes a classic, a tradition, and the role of literature in exploring the human condition? This story is part of a much larger story in which we see European Romanticism reshaping these issues and wrestling with the concept of the 'modern' and its relationship with the past. This course begins with Shakespeare in his period, but moves outward to examine key texts and productions from the humanist, neo-classical and romantic periods in thought in which the problem of traditions is thematised.

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