Teaching Petrarchan and Anti-Petrarchan Discourses in Early Modern English Lyrics

2012

The aim of the present article is to help students realize that Petrarchism has been an influential source of inspiration for Early Modern English lyrics. Its topics and conventions have lent themselves to a wide variety of appropriations which the present selection of texts for analysis tries to illustrate. A few telling examples from Spenser, Sidney, Donne and Marvell have been chosen where the topic of the lady cast as a valuable treasure is variously addressed. Whereas Spenser’s Sonnet 15 of his Amoretti conveys the lover’s confident hope of its possession in a near marriage, Sidney’s Sonnet 37 of Astrophil and Stella portrays his frustration at the idea of being robbed of his cherished…

Jules Romains' Free Version of Volpone: Text and Performance

2010

Competency-based Teaching of Shakespeare: How to Master King Lear

2011

Shakespeare’s hypotext has invited so many hypertextual transformations over the last four hundred years that twenty-first century students deserve the chance of digging into this rich mine of information and dramatic possibilities. The practical approach of a competency-based teaching method offers great advantages over traditional practices in that it devises a series of specific tasks for students to perform. As a result, their linguistic, historical, theatrical and intercultural skills are enhanced to such an extent that they acquire the competence they need to approach other early modern texts in a confident manner. This paper suggests a variety of tasks which can help students achieve…

Enrique Llovet's Versions of Volpone and Increasing Freedom of Expression in Spain

2008