Shakespeare and
Children’s Literature
Spring 2009
ENGL710: Shakespeare and Children’s Literature
Spring 2009; MWF 1.30 – E. Hateley
In 1807, Charles and Mary Lamb published Tales from Shakespeare, the first prose adaptations of William Shakespeare’s plays for child readers ever published in English. In the two centuries since then, adaptations and appropriations of Shakespeare’s plays for child readers have spread throughout the Anglophone world in the form of picture books, comic books, novels, plays, television and films. In this reading-intensive course we will examine Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Othello, and versions of them produced for child audiences from the nineteenth century into the twenty-first century. In doing so, we will consider questions of authority and authenticity, cultural value, canonicity, and notions of authorship. As we move through each play and its afterlives, we will take theorized approaches to constructions of youth, gender, sexuality, and race, and will do so in order to see how and what Shakespeare is made to ‘mean’ when offered to contemporary child readers. Beyond prose adaptations, texts examined will include novels such as MacB, The Course of True Love Never Did Run Smooth, and The Juliet Club; movies will include Romeo + Juliet, Get Over It!, and O; we will also be engaging with selected episodes of television’s Animated Tales from Shakespeare. Assessment will include an oral presentation, two short written pieces, a long research paper, and exams.
This course counts for Women’s Studies credit.
The booklist can be found at: http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/RYKOXFNAGCX95/ref=cm_pdp_lm_title
Please note, I do NOT profit from this list, I have compiled it via Amazon.com because several of the texts we will be reading are now only available second-hand, and this list allows me to specify which edition you should purchase. I STRONGLY urge you to get the specific edition of the Shakespearean texts as listed.
Closer to the Spring Semester, there will be a Course Pack available from the Arts & Sciences Copy Center (Eisenhower).
Page Last Updated: September 28, 2008.