From The Spanish Tragedy to Kill Bill 8211 Revenge on Stage and Screen

This course looks at a dramatic genre that has enjoyed popularity from Elizabethan times to our present. The experience of extreme injustice in a society that seems to be incapable of setting things right by legal means seems to permeate through the ages. It raises questions of trust in institutions, of the right to self-justice – and it finds its expression in the revenge tragedy or, if you move to the present in movies that develop around a revenge plot. The typical ingredients of this genre include murder, ghosts, intrigue, cunning plotting, madness, violence, an increasingly rising body count and a catastrophe with hardly any survivors. In other words, everything that makes a 'killing' play or film... Our course will begin with exploring the roots of the genre, by discussing a variety of revenge tragedies by notable Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights. In a second step, we will look at how the dramatic genre of the revenge tragedy has been adapted for the screen in the twentieth- and twenty-first century, for example in Western movies, such as Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill or the more recent musical movie Sweeney Todd. Apparently, the question of revenge and the issues connected with it are as pertinent in our contemporary society as they were in Elizabethan times. The following texts are going to be discussed in class: Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy; Cyril Tourneur or Thomas Middleton, The Revenger's Tragedy; Cyril Tourneur, The Atheist's Play; George Chapman, The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois; John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi Students are asked to buy: a) any English language edition of John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi; b) Katharine Eisamann Maus. ed., Four Revenge Tragedies (Oxford: OUP, 1998) [contains the other four plays we are going to discuss] Anglistik Since the class is intended to give you a broad survey, it also requires a considerable amount of reading. Therefore, I recommend to all students interested in taking the course to purchase their texts and start reading as soon as possible. All participants should have read The Spanish Tragedy by the beginning of the term. 2 KP: quizzes on the texts 5 KP: quizzes on the texts plus short oral presentation with visualization 7 KP: quizzes on the texts plus short oral presentation with visualization and written assignment(s) (total of 3000-4000 words) Universität Siegen SoSe 2010 Univ.-Prof. Dr. Müller Anja