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Focusing on selected works of the “father of English literature” and the Bard, this seminar offers the opportunity to study two of the most influential writers in English literature. Reading Shakespeare’s most overtly Chaucerian plays (The Two Noble Kinsmen, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Troilus and Cressida) as well as his narrative poems against the background of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, and The Legend of Good Women, we will investigate Shakespeare’s indebtedness to Chaucer. Shakespeare not only borrowed certain plots and themes from Chaucer but took productive advantage of Chaucer’s own engagement with and handling of the literary past (in particular, of his readings of the antique world). So, rather than just tracing Chaucerian echoes through Shakespeare’s works, we will pursue the more complex question of how texts interact with their predecessors and at the same time pave the way for their successors. |
