Preamble: This course will offer a comparative perspective on the relationship between literatures and societies through the rubric of theatre. Through close reading and part enactment of selected plays from Indian languages in translation and from Elizabethan drama, the course will expose students to specific cultural productions such as the historical drama emerging from two distinct civilizations. Students will examine the dramatic representation of the making of the leader: his/her engagement with the socio-economic and political ethos of the times; the dramatization of power and the individual leader’s impact on structures of power. The course will also analyze the intrinsic relationship between leadership and communication: the communication strategies involved in rhetoric and oratory.
Course Contents: Drama and society; representation of historical figures in theatre; leadership and politics of power; leadership and communication; dramatic art: dialogue, rhetoric and oratory; dramatic conventions: stage and setting; performance and history: cultural and critical contexts; history and historical drama: construction/deconstruction of history; survey of contemporary critical work on the ‘history play’.
Texts:
1. T. Sterne, Shakespeare: From Stage to Page, New Accents, Routledge, 2004.
2. A. Dharwadker, Theatres of Independence: Drama, Theory and Urban Performance in India since 1947, Oxford University Press, 2006.
References:
1. J.Dollimore and A.Sinfield, Political Shakespeare: essays in Cultural Materialism. Manchester University Press, 1995.
2. S.K.Das, A History of Indian Literature vols. VIII and IX, South Asia Books, 1995.
