Built around Plato's Symposium, Shakespeare (including A Midsummer Night's Dream), Catholic writings (including Humanae Vitae), and several movies, this course explores the nature of romance and erotic love. We will examine such topics as sexuality, marriage, and procreation with an eye towards how we can be better at being in love. The course generally tries to integrate the analytic approach of philosophy with the imaginative approach of literature.

Through a close reading of King Lear 3.2, students will explore both Lear's language and the effect of subsequent editorial intervention. Focusing specifically on punctuation within the King's famous "Blow winds" speech, students will learn to what degree punctuation affects one's understanding of the language and performance choices.

Surveys a range of comic texts from different media, the cultures that produced them, and various theories of comedy. Authors and directors studied may include Aristophanes, Shakespeare, MoliSre, Austen, and Chaplin. This is a second variation of the course. It includes a survey of a range of comic texts from different media, the cultures that produced them, and various theories of comedy. Authors studied include Twain, Wilde, Shakespeare, and Cervantes. Like other communications-intensive courses in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, it allows the student to produce a long writing assignment, in addition to several shorter pieces; it also offers substantial opportunities for oral expression, through student-led discussion, class reports, and class participation.

This course looks at comedy in drama, novels, and films from Classical Greece to the twentieth century. Focusing on examples from Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Molière, Wilde, Chaplin, and Billy Wilder, along with theoretical contexts, the class examines comedy as a transgressive mode with revolutionary social and political implications. This is a Communications Intensive (CI) class with emphasis on discussion, and frequent, short essays.

At the outset of the 16th century, Europeans tended to dismiss English literature as inferior to continental literary traditions; the educated Englishman was obliged to travel to the continent and speak in other languages in order to culture himself. By the end of the Renaissance, however, some of the greatest works in the English language from Shakespeare's dramas to Thomas More's Utopia had been written. In this course, the student will read and examine these works, situating them within their socio-historical and literary contexts, while attempting to determine how the art of English language and letters came into its own during this dynamic period. (English Literature 202)

Intensive study of an important topic or period in drama. Close analysis of major plays, enriched by critical readings and attention to historical and theatrical contexts. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic for Fall: Renaissance Drama.

These tutorials focusing on "Shakespeare in Context" present viewers with background and contextual material to particular plays and a series of challenges based on that material. Select a play; as the presentation unfolds, you may follow links to view facsimile texts, and from there navigate freely between the texts themselves and the tutorials. The tutorials treating "The Early Modern Material Text" introduce viewers to book production in the period, and suggest that how old books were made and sold just might affect their "meaning" then and now.

Students will examine meter and experiment with pauses in the dialogue between Lady Anne and Richard in 1.2, in order to analyze how rhythm affects meaning and tone. This lesson will take approximately 50 minutes.

The goals of this class are two-fold: the first is to experience the creative processes and storytelling behind several of theater's arts and to acquire the analytical skills necessary in assessing the meaning they transmit when they come together in production. Secondly, we will introduce you to these languages in a creative way by giving you hands-on experience in each. To that end, several Visiting Artists and MIT faculty in Theater Arts will guest lecture, lead workshops, and give you practical instruction in their individual art forms.

This subject offers a broad survey of texts (both literary and philosophical) drawn from the Western tradition and selected to trace the growth of ideas about the nature of mankind's ethical and political life in the West since the renaissance It will deal with the change in perspective imposed by scientific ideas, the general loss of a supernatural or religious perspective upon human events, and the effects for good or ill of the increasing authority of an intelligence uninformed by religion as a guide to life. The readings are roughly complementary to the readings in 21L001, and classroom discussion will stress appreciation and analysis of texts that came to represent the cultural heritage of the modern world.

One of Shakespeare's plays

Introductory note and exercises on dramatic development in Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Cloze test based one of Hamlet's soliloquies. Key words have been omitted in full cloze style and answers are provided. Good revision exercise.

" Through a progressive series of composition projects, students investigate the sonic organization of musical works and performances, focusing on fundamental questions of unity and variety. Aesthetic issues are considered in the pragmatic context of the instructions that composers provide to achieve a desired musical result, whether these instructions are notated in prose, as graphic images, or in symbolic notation. No formal training is required; this version of the class is a general elective suitable for a relatively large-enrollment class. Weekly listening, reading, and composition Assignments and Labs draw on a broad range of musical styles and intellectual traditions, from various cultures and historical periods."

Selection of courses to explore Writing and Literature at MIT.

history, art and science, art vs. science, history of science, religion, natural philosophy, mathematics, literature, cosmology,physics, astronomy, alchemy, chemistry, plays, theater history, cultural studies, Shakespeare, Ford, Tate, Behn, Francis Bacon, Burton, Hobbes, Boyle, 17th century, England, English history, Charles I, Charles II, Cromwell,

" This class explores the creation (and creativity) of the modern scientific and cultural world through study of western Europe in the 17th century, the age of Descartes and Newton, Shakespeare, Milton and Ford. It compares period thinking to present-day debates about the scientific method, art, religion, and society. This team-taught, interdisciplinary subject draws on a wide range of literary, dramatic, historical, and scientific texts and images, and involves theatrical experimentation as well as reading, writing, researching and conversing. The primary theme of the class is to explore how England in the mid-seventeenth century became "a world turned upside down" by the new ideas and upheavals in religion, politics, and philosophy, ideas that would shape our modern world. Paying special attention to the "theatricality" of the new models and perspectives afforded by scientific experimentation, the class will read plays by Shakespeare, Tate, Brecht, Ford, Churchill, and Kushner, as well as primary and secondary texts from a wide range of disciplines. Students will also compose and perform in scenes based on that material."

Introduces practice and theory of literary criticism. Seminar focuses on topics such as the history of critical methods and techniques, and the continuity of certain subjects in literary history. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic: Theory and Use of Figurative Language. This seminar offers a course of readings in lyric poetry. It aims to enhance the student's capacity to understand the nature of poetic language and the enjoyment of poetic texts by treating poems as messages to be deciphered. The seminar will briefly touch upon the history of theories of figurative language since Aristotle and it will attend to the development of those theories during the last thirty years, noting the manner in which they tended to consider figures of speech distinct from normative or literal expression, and it will devote particular attention to the rise of theories that quarrel with this distinction. The seminar also aims to communicate a rough sense of the history of English-speaking poetry since the early modern period. Some attention will be paid as well to the use of metaphor in science.

Introduces practice and theory of literary criticism. Seminar focuses on topics such as the history of critical methods and techniques, and the continuity of certain subjects in literary history. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic: Theory and Use of Figurative Language. How does one writer use another writer's work? Does it matter if one author has been dead 300 years? What difference does it make if she's a groundbreaking twentieth-century feminist and the writer she values has come to epitomize the English literary tradition? How can a novelist borrow from plays and poems? By reading Virginia Woolf's major novels and essays in juxtaposition with some of the Shakespeare plays that (depending on one's interpretation) haunt, enrich, and/or shape her writing, we will try to answer these questions and raise others. Readings in literary criticism, women's studies, and other literary texts will complement our focus on the relationship--across time, media, and gender--between Shakespeare and Woolf. As a seminar, we will work to become more astute readers of literature within its historical, artistic, and political contexts, and consider how literature both reflects and contributes to these societal frameworks. Central texts will include Shakespeare's Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline, and The Winter's Tale, and Woolf's A Room of One's Own, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, and Between the Acts. This subject is an advanced seminar in both the Literature and the Women's Studies Program.