This course is designed to help students become confident readers of Shakespeare’s language, articulate the significance of aural and visual elements of Shakespearean scripts, and consider the plays within a specific cultural and historical context. Plays include Othello, Macbeth, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest. This course fulfills requirements for the bacc core (Western Culture or Literature and the Arts) and the English major.
Rebecca Olson
Assistant Professor of English
Oregon State University
Moreland 242
2550 SW Jefferson Way
Corvallis,
OR
97331 USA
Tel:
541-737-1631
Email contact form
Credentials
- Ph.D. Brandeis University (2008)
- B.A. Boston University (2000)
Research
Rebecca Olson, an Oregon native, teaches courses on early modern poetry and drama (c. 1400-1700). Her ongoing research interest is the relationship between literature and the visual: the ways writers encourage readers and playgoers to engage the “mind’s eye.” Her book-in-progress, for example, reveals the significance of Renaissance tapestries in the work of Shakespeare, Spenser, and other early modern writers. She has published essays in journals including Spenser Studies, Word & Image, and Modern Philology.
Teaching/Research Specialization:
Shakespeare, early modern material culture, and word and image studies
Course Information
Available Spring Term
The Seventeenth-Century Lyric
The seventeenth century produced some of the most moving short poems in the English language: poets including Ben Jonson, John Donne, and John Milton experimented with the lyric to find new ways to address lovers, children, friends, and God. In addition to providing an overview of the formal poetic innovations of this rich period of English literature, we will pay special attention to 1) the historical and political contexts of these lyrics (i.e., the English Civil Wars); 2) the specific materiality of original printings (for example, we would compare the typeset of Herbert’s The Altar to contemporary publications of the Bible); and 3) what is at stake when we attempt to define “lyric” poetry in the first place.
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