UIUC The Dialectics of Orientalism in Early Modern Europe

October 7-8, 2011, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Levis Faculty Center

The ‘Oriental’ on the European Stage from Shakespeare to Voltaire

CWL 561, ENGL 563, FR 572, GER 576, SPAN 590

Marcus Keller
Wednesday, 3-5pm
FLB 1038
mkeller@illinois.edu

The goal of this course is to closely examine the “Oriental” as a recurring figure on the European stage from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century and as literature’s most palpable incarnation of Orientalism. Does the “Oriental” express more or less the same ideas across Europe and throughout the centuries? Can we therefore speak, as Edward Said suggests, of a uniform Western discourse on the Orient? Or do we have to differentiate our understanding of Orientalism according to the specific historical and cultural contexts in which the “Oriental” appears, and if so, how? In addition to these critical issues, each play will also allow us to explore and compare the national traditions and aesthetic contexts in which they were created. Finally, we will seek to answer the question why some “Orientals” like Othello and Nathan the Wise became canonical figures.

Texts by Marlowe, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Racine, Voltaire, and Lessing.

Students will read the plays either in their original language or in English translation. Class discussion will be in English but aspects of literary and cultural translation will be an important dimension of this course. Final projects exploring the transcultural and/or translational component of Orientalism are most welcome.

For our explorations of early modern transnational orientalism we will greatly benefit from the international conference on “The Dialectics of Orientalism in Early Modern Europe” (October 7-8, 2011), which course participants are expected to attend.