Course Description
In England, attitudes to political authority and social identity were challenged and transformed during the early modern period, as is evident, if somewhat nebulously, in Shakespeare's works. This course examines the city of London, 1590-1610, where such works were shaped and performed, as a crucial context for understanding these developments.
Athena Title
City of London, 1590-1610
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
First, students, will acquire core knowledge about the city of London, including its political, religious, economic, and social structures; as well as about the nature of its urban landscape, its key topographical features, and how these formed a part of everyday life for the city's inhabitants. Through reading assignments, written work, presentations, and class discussion, they will improve their analytical thinking, their writing, and their verbal expression. Second, students will become familiar with and gain the ability to read, understand in context, and take a critical approach to some of the major textual and visual sources of the period, including Stow's Survey and the works of city playwrights — Shakespeare's contemporaries — such as Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, and Anthony Munday, as well as his courtly colleague, Ben Jonson. Furthermore, students will learn to read some of the key classes of documentary sources, including civic records, chronicles, proclamations, and court records. Third, students will engage with important historiographical concepts including political culture and social order, and learn to take a critical approach to the arguments of historians by comparing and debating points of disagreement. They will also have the opportunity to question common assumptions about the past, and be introduced to different historiographical approaches, with a view to identifying and evaluating them. At the end of the course, they should be able to analyze and evaluate the way that London, as a city, contributed to the changing attitudes to political authority and social identity that characterize the early modern period.
Topical Outline
1. Shakespeare's London in context 2. The city and its landscape 3. Political culture 4. Performing authority 5. Reformation identities and the Church 6. Economy and society 7. Gender and the city 8. Changing economic and social structures 9. Urban growth and immigration 10. Stability, disorder, and the culture of governance 11. New spaces, new worlds, new ideas 12. The city and the stage 13. Changing perceptions of the city 14. Politics in Jacobean London 15. The significance of Shakespeare's London