123221 SE Literary Seminar / BA Paper / MA British/Irish/New English (2021W)

The English were the first to behead a king. In 1649, the Civil Wars between Charles I's supporters and Oliver Cromwell's parliamentarians, which had been raging for seven years, culminated in the ruler's deposition by parliament, trial, conviction for treason and execution. This introduced the interregnum of the Commonwealth, with Cromwell as Lord Protector. His government promptly closed all theatres - a thorn in the Puritans' side for many years - for the duration of their time in power. The wife of the beheaded king, French-born catholic Henrietta Maria, who had tried to help the royalist cause from beginning to end by raising funds on the continent, had already gone into exile in 1644. She settled in Paris, where, two years later, the future successor to the English throne, the then 16-year-old Prince Charles, joined her for the next decade-and-a-half. Following Oliver Cromwell's death and the defeat and flight of his son, who had become Lord Protector upon his father's demise, parliament, supported by the army, asked the exiled Prince Charles to ascend the throne. He did so, in 1660, at the age of 30, restoring - as Charles II - the monarchy and embarking on his twenty-five-year-long reign as politically weak but popular sovereign. The so-called Merry Monarch's penchant for everything the Puritans (had) most despised, made for a powerful cultural backlash against the values of the interregnum. Entertainment exploded, public theatres re-opened this time allowing women onto the stage for the first time in British history - and a whole new genre was born: the lewd, witty, frivolous, money-obsessed and cynical as well as satirical Comedy of Manners, most commonly referred to as 'Restoration Comedy', which neither the Great Plague, the pest epidemic of 1665, nor the Great Fire of London, in 1666, could wrestle to the ground.
In this course we are going to delve into the second half of the 17th century, and combine discussing four canonical plays (two by male authors and two by a female one) against the backdrop of genre conventions and sexual politics. We are going to round things off by discussing a late 20th century play Edward Bond's Restoration (1981), which sheds light on aspects of class and race latently present in the original 17th century Comedies of Manner, but denied or suppressed or pushed to the sides.

Quizzes:
There will be a text knowledge quiz for each play. You will be able to fill in each quiz at home. Please send each filled-in quiz as a pdf-file attachment via email before the start of the lesson in which we will start discussing the respective play. NB: Any quiz sent in after the relevant class has started will remain unmarked, which means you won't be able to collect points on it.

Specialist model:
Most importantly, this should allow you to delve into a world that is 'chronologically other' from ours - due to its religious conflicts between Protestants and Catholics; due to its rigid class system, in which land-ownership and social privilege determine everything; due to its concept of marriage (without the possibility of divorce) as a pure business arrangement rather than a union based on mutual love; and due to the two greatest dangers that beset sexual encounters (syphilis and childbirth) - and thus learn by comparing and contrasting.

As regards methodology: There will be no monological student presentations in this class. Instead, you are expected to act as a specialist for one lesson of the term, either alone or as a member of a team, depending on the number of participants. How exactly this works in terms of timing, what will be expected of you and what a 'prep mail', 'the double-feedback-loop' and a 'golden nugget' is, in all of which you are going to participate, I shall explain in detail in the first lesson. You'll be expected to provide a powerpoint presentation as an accompaniment to your specialist task.