Learning outcomes:
This course has been designed to enable you to:
- Understand the English sonnet form and how Shakespeare uses it as an effective vehicle for powerfully conveying thoughts and feelings.
- Learn how Shakespeare’s sonnets make innovative use of poetic and rhetorical conventions to convey a vivid sense of authentic emotion and lived experience.
- Appreciate how the interpretation of individual sonnets is affected by reading them as part of a collection, and to see how Shakespeare’s sonnets can often be validly performed in different ways.
Course sessions:
1. The sonnet form, and how Shakespeare uses it
We will look closely at the structures of sound and meaning in Shakespearean sonnets, learning how to perceive a sonnet’s form and the structured expression of its content, with detailed analysis of specific examples including Sonnets #12, 17, and 61. Students will be tasked with choosing another sonnet to analyse, from the group running from #1-17.
2. Shakespeare's sonnets in context - conventions and collections
We will consider the ways Shakespeare’s sonnets play off against existing sonnet conventions, and against one another. Especial attention will be given to the ‘Dark Lady’ sonnets (#127-152), and to the way the most famous of all Shakespeare’s sonnets (#18, ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’) sits amid the surrounding sonnets in the sequence (especially #17 and 19).
3. Storytelling in Shakespeare's sonnets
We will consider whether Shakespeare’s sonnets tell a story, what place they have in his poetic career, and to what extent they can shed light on his personal life. Particular attention will be given to the problems and intriguing questions raised by Sonnets #20 and 41, and students will also be invited to explore the group running from #78-87.
4. Complexity of tone in Shakespeare's sonnets
We will look at the complex tone often struck by Shakespeare’s sonnets, especially the ways in which subtle irony and surprising counter-currents of feeling can make them both more challenging and more rewarding to read. Particular attention will be given to Sonnets #32-37, 82, 48, 53, and 93.
5. Rhetoric and feeling in Shakespeare's sonnets
Today we will explore Shakespeare’s use of formal rhetoric and his acknowledgement of its limits, as a way of approaching the powerful impression the sequence gives of taking us through the many unforeseen changes that affect a love relationship over time. Especial attention will be given to #56, and to the chronologically late group of sonnets running from #100-126.
The more time you can spend carefully reading Shakespeare's sonnets, the more you stand to get from this course. Shakespeare's whole sonnet sequence can easily be found online. Nonetheless, for a more reliable text with helpful glossing of difficult phrases it is recommended getting a modern edition of the sonnets, such as: William Shakespeare, The Complete Sonnets and Poems, ed. Colin Burrow (The Oxford Shakespeare, Oxford University Press), 2008.
Certificate of Participation
At the end of your Winter Festival course(s) a Certificate of Participation will be sent to you electronically.
Non-credit bearing
Courses on our Virtual Winter Festival of Learning are non-credit bearing.
