English 227 Seminar in Comedy: Men’s Parts, Women’s Roles:

Transvestite Comedy through the Restoration

 

Dr. Adrienne L. Eastwood

 

Thursdays 7:00 p.m. – 9:45 p.m., FOB 104

 

Office Hours and Location: Faculty Office Building, Room 116.  Hours: Tuesdays/Thursdays 10:30-11:30 a.m., Mondays, 1:30 p.m. -3:30 p.m., and by appointment.  I will also usually be in my office prior to our meeting time on Thursday evenings.

 

Phone #: 924-4509

Email: Adrienne.Eastwood@sjsu.edu

Web page: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/eastwood/

 

Course Description: Until 1660, all theatrical roles were played by men.  So, when Romeo and Juliet breathlessly say goodbye on the balcony, the audience accepts the performance of femininity offered by the boy under the dress.  But in Shakespeare’s comedies, the performance of gender becomes itself the focus, as the playwright gives us characters like Rosalind, Portia, and Viola who, while playing the role of “women,” assume “male” identities, and try to pass (with varying degrees of conviction) as men.  In Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, the title character was based on a well-known actual 17th century transvestite—Mary Frith—who roamed the streets of London dressed as a man.  When women took the stage in 1660, they played male roles as well, acting in “breeches parts” as well as the traditional female characters. 

 

This course approaches the dramatic mode of comedy from a critical perspective that takes such issues into account and historicizes them.  Some questions that will guide our reading include: Do these performances destabilize gender difference, or reaffirm it?  How much of a role does sexual desire play in such performances?  How might these performances have responded to social controversies over the role of women in the early modern period?  What is the relationship between cross-dressing on the street and cross-dressing on stage?  What is the relationship between role-playing on stage, and the development and transformation of sexual identity?  Since we will be reading plays by men and women, how might the gender of the author shape the performance of gender by her/his characters on stage? 

 

Beginning with a solid grounding in the genre of comedy, we will read plays from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. 

 

 

Course Objectives: The primary goal of this course is to give you the opportunity to read, study, and discuss a number of canonical and non-canonical dramatic texts, concentrating on the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Restoration eras.  You will be working within the mode of a new historicist critical methodology—one that uses both historical information and an assortment of cultural artifacts to arrive at a nuanced sense of the political, social, and psychological complexities of the culture under study.  We will also read important works in critical gender studies, feminist theory, and queer studies.

 

 

           

Required Texts:

 

Course Readers (available from Maple Press, 481 E. San Carlos St., 408-297-1000)

 

Garber, Marjorie.  Vested Interests: Cross Dressing and Cultural Anxiety.  Harper Perennial, 1992. 

 

Heywood, Thomas.  The Fair Maid of the West.  Regents Renaissance Drama Series. 

 

Jonson, Ben. Epicoene, Or the Silent Woman.  New Mermaids Edition. 

 

Shakespeare:

As You Like It*

Twelfth Night*

*Any annotated version of these plays will do.  I like the Oxford World Classics Series if you need a recommendation, although Bedford St. Martins has excellent editions also. 

 

Middleton and Dekker, The Roaring Girl.  Revels Plays. 

 

Biography of Moll Frith available online at

http://www.crimeculture.com/earlyunderworlds/Contents/Cutpurse.html

 

Kristina Straub, Sexual Suspects.  Available as an E-book from our library.

 

Colly Cibber’s An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber.  Available on reserve or from me.  You must copy and return. 

 

Colly Cibber, The Careless Husband. 

 

Narrative of the Life of Charlotte Charke.  Available on reserve or from me—you must copy and return.

 

Recommended:

 

Bakhtin, Mikhail.  Rabelais and His World.  Trans. Helen Iswolsky.  Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984. 


Judith Butler, Gender Trouble.  New York: Routeledge, 1990.

 

If you are so inclined, this website lists online booksellers who donate money from your purchases to the English Department.  (This usually goes back to you in one form or another.)  Go to this url for a list of participants: http://www.sjsu.edu/english/donations/

 

On Reserve: The following texts will be placed on reserve for your use:

Bakhtin, Mikhail.  Rabelias and His World.  Trans. Helene Iswolsky.

Bulter, Judith.  Gender Trouble.   

Shevelow, Kathryn.  Charlotte.  New York: Holt, 2005.

The Well Known Trouble Maker: A Life of Charlotte Charke, by Fidelis Morgan with Charlotte Charke. 

Straub, Kristina.  Sexual Suspects: Eighteenth-Century Players and Sexual Ideology.

 

Course Requirements:  This is a seminar, and as such, each of us is responsible for the quality and usefulness of our meetings.  I expect that you will find the readings both interesting and valuable, and I encourage you to express and explore your particular interests as we work through the material. 

 

Discussion Leaders: To help encourage active participation, I require at least one student per week (depending on the number of students in the class) to be responsible for leading that week’s discussion.  A sign-up sheet will be provided the first few weeks for you to select the works and issues that you are the most interested in.  If there are several readings one week, select one or two on which to place the most focus.  During your assigned week, you should read carefully, and be prepared to pose provocative questions and possible answers stimulate class discussion.  Please pay close attention to the text itself.  You should be prepared to point to specific aspects of the text to aid your discussion.    

 

Internet Posting: I have set up a list-serv (“earlymods”) for this course and require you to post informal weekly responses on the site.  To subscribe, click on the following URL: http://lists.sjsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/earlymods (or send an email to “earlymods-subscribe@lists.sjsu.edu.  Then, beginning with next week’s readings, you will post a weekly response to this list by 5 p.m. the Wednesday before class.  This should give everyone (especially those leading the discussion that week) a chance to look over your posts and have some idea of what everyone is interested in.  Let me stress here that this is not intended to be an overwhelming burden.  Rather, it is meant to provide you with a forum to discuss what you read and get a sense of the interests of the group. 

 

Written Work:  You will be asked to write one 15-20 page scholarly essay for this class, using both primary and secondary texts.  This essay will allow you to more thoroughly develop a line of thinking inspired by the reading and discussions.  Your success on this paper will be directly proportional to your knowledge and understanding of the texts. 

 

Grading Breakdown:           

Contribution and Participation            15%

Presentation                                                15%

Weekly Postings                                    15%

Seminar Paper                                                55%

 

Program Learning Outcomes:

·      Students will demonstrate an appropriate level of expertise in literary history, literary theory, and rhetoric.

·      Students will demonstrate high-level proficiency in literary research and in the synthesis of research.

·      Students will demonstrate critical and analytical skills in the interpretation and evaluation of literary texts.

·      Students will demonstrate a command of written academic English, including the abilities to a) organize and present material in a cogent fashion, b) formulate and defend original arguments, c) employ effectively the language of their discipline and d) write under time constraints. 

·      Students will demonstrate a reading knowledge of at least one foreign language.)

·      Students preparing for teaching careers will receive the appropriate instruction.

·      Students will be prepared for further graduate study.

 

Academic Integrity: Using another scholar’s words or ideas without proper documentation is plagiarism.  It is SJSU’s policy to respond to any act of plagiarism by: failing the student on the assignment, possibly failing the student in the course, and considering the dismissal of the student from the university.  

If you have any questions about when or how to document a source, do not hesitate to ask me for clarification.  The SJSU library has an on-line tutorial on plagiarism that you can access at http://tutorials.sjlibrary.org/plagiarism/index.htm.

 

Schedule of Readings (Subject to Revision):

 

Recommendations: Each week I have selected one or two primary texts (marked with a “P”) and one or two (sometimes more, sometimes fewer) secondary texts.  My goal is to provide you with context, and to offer up some interpretive ideas for your consideration.  I recommend that you spend your energies reading the primary texts first and review the critical materials as time permits. 

 

Week Zero

Jan. 26                        Introductions.   Overview of genre theory.  Some questions to guide our work.

 

Week 1            Genre Theory.

 

Feb. 2                        David Galbraith, “Theories of Comedy” (Reader)

                        Lawrence Danson, “Genres in Theory” (Reader)

                        Janette Dillon, “Elizabethan Comedy” (Reader)

                        Franciose Laroque, “Popular Festivity” (Reader)

                        Sir Philip Sidney, “Defense of Poesy” (Reader) - P

                        Stephen Gosson, “The School of Abuse” (Reader) – P

                        Thomas Lodge, “A Reply to Stephen Gosson” (Reader) - P

           

Week 2            Genre and Gender Theory.

 

Feb 9                        Mikhail Bakhtin, “Introduction,” Rabelais and His World (Reader)

                        Judith Butler, “Introduction,” Gender Trouble (Reader)

                        Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests.

 

Week 3            Shakespeare

 

Feb. 16            As You Like It - P

                        Twelfth Night – P

                        Juliet Dusinberre, “As Who Liked It?” (Reader)

                        Susan Wofford, “ ‘To You I Give Myself’ “ (Reader)

                        Barbara Hodgdon, “Sexual Disguise and the Theatre of Gender” (Reader)

                        Lisa Jardine, “Twins and Travesties” (Reader)           

                        Powell & Shattuck, “Looking for Liberation and Lesbians” (Reader) Optional

                        Jonathan Crewe “In the Field of Dreams” (Reader)  Optional

 

Week 4             Silence and Speech

 

Feb. 23            Ben Jonson, Epiocene  - P

                        Hic Mulier and Haec Vir (Reader) – P

                        Also available here: http://www.english.ucsb.edu/teaching/resources/reading_lists/renaissance/hic_mulier.asp and

http://www.english.ucsb.edu/teaching/resources/reading_lists/renaissance/haec_vir.asp

                        Philip Mirabelli, “Silence, Wit, and Wisdom” (Reader)

                        Jean Howard, “Cross-Dressing, the Theatre, and Gender Struggle” (Reader)

                        Eric Nicholson, “Dry Mocks and Wet Smocks”(Reader) Optional

 

Week 5            Roaring on Stage and Street

 

March 1            Middleton and Dekker, The Roaring Girl - P

                        “A Biography of Moll Cutpurse,” available online:              - P

                        David Cressy, “Gender Trouble and Cross-Dressing” (Reader)

                        Stephen Orgel, “Subtexts of the Roaring Girl” (Reader)

                        Natasha Korda, “The Case of Moll Frith” (Reader)

                       

Week 6            Heywood: More Urban Comedy

March 8            Fair Maid of the West - P

                       

 

Week 7            Aphra Behn: A Word from the Women

March 15            The Rover - P

                        The Widow Ranter – P

                        Peter E. Morgan, “A Subject to Redress” (Reader)

           

Week 8            In the Shadow of Big Behn

March 22            Thomas Southerne, Sir Anthony Love (Reader) - P

                        Harold Weber, “The Female Libertine”  (Reader)

 

Week 9            SPRING BREAK

March 29            NO CLASS

 

Week 10           

April 5                        NO CLASS – Make sure you have the materials copied for Weeks 11 and 12

 

Week 11            Actors and Star Power

                        Colly Cibber, Apology – P

April 12            Kristina Straub, “Ocular Affairs” and “Colly Cibber’s Butt” from Sexual                                                 Suspects. Available as an ebook.

 

 

Week 12            Fops and Pops

April 19            Colly Cibber, The Careless Husband – P (Reader)

                        Straub, “Colly Cibber’s Fops,” from Sexual Suspects

 

Week 13            Fathers Lock Up Your Daughters

April 26            Charlotte Charke

                        The Narrative of the Life of Charotte Charke - P

           

Week 14            Charke Attack

May 3                        [Paper Prospectus Due]

                        Charke, from The History of Henry Dumont, Esq. excerpted from Pages Passed                                     from Hand to Hand: The Hidden Tradition of Homosexual Literature in English                                     from 1748-1914.  (Reader) - P

                        Straub, “Guilty Pleasures,” from Sexual Suspects.

                        Trumbach, R. “London’s Sapphists”  (Reader)

 

Week 15            Last Day of Instruction

May 19            Party

 

           

Papers due by noon on May 23rd