A Detailed Breakdown of Class Meetings including Readings and Assignments:

UNIT I: INTRODUCTION

Session 1 - a brief, one day session on the historical context of the 16th century that will serve as a starting point for our course. Introduction of key terms such as the querelle des , theatre as opposed to drama, and what we will mean by performance will be addressed.

For more on the term students may read:
Joan Kelly, "Early Feminist Theory and the Querelle des, 1400-1789" in History and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly,
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984).

Session 2 - Key questions in the historiography of women and creative output in early modern Europe will be addressed. Burkhardt, de Beauvoir, and Woolf will be introduced. The question of women's creativity and restraints imposed on her will be raised. Portions of the video production of "A Room of One's Own" with Eileen Atkins will be shown and discussed in class.

Readings for this session will include:
Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H.M. Parshley pp 105-8.
Virginia Woolf "A Room of One's Own,"

Session 3 - Joan Kelly's breakthrough question: "Did Women Have a Renaissance?" and its impact on research will be discussed.

Readings:
Joan Kelly, "Did Women Have a Renaissance?" in History and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly, ed. Catherine R. Stimpson (series editor), Women in Culture and Society (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984).

First Assignment is introduced in class (to be due in 3 weeks):
students are asked, at this early date, to think about the issues raised in sessions 2 and 3 and actively involve themselves with the materials. Students are to write a letter addressing their response to either Woolf, De Beauvoir, Burckhardt or Kelly. The letter may be a personal one written to themselves, or it may be addressed to one of these four writers. They may also choose to raise a question of their own that they would like to explore throughout the course.

Session 4 - The specific contexts of England, France and Italy will be introduced in a follow up to the previous session. Women's position in theatre, both as performers and writers will be addressed. The presence of women on the Italian stage in the late 16th century as opposed to their nonexistence on the English stage will be a main point for discussion.
The importance of the Italian piazza and court settings, the corrales in Spain will be offset by the English and French public stage. A main point for discussion will be the extent to which women's work in the theatre challenges or confirms the four theorists discussed in the previous session.

Readings for this session will include:
Laurie Detenbeck, "Women and the Management of Dramaturgy in La Calandria" in Donna: Women in Italian Culture, ed. Ada Testafferi, University of Toronto Italian Studies & (Toronto: Dovehouse Editions, Inc, 1989) 245-252.

Michael Shapiro, "The Introduction of Actresses in England: Delay or Defensiveness?" in Enacting Gender on the English Renaissance Stage, Ed. Bibiana Comensoli and Anne Russell, (University of Illinois Press, 1999), 177-200.

Jan Clarke, "Women in Theatre Administration in France During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," in Women and theatre: Occasional Papers 2, ed. Maggie Gale and Susan Bassnet (University of Birmingham, 1994).

Melveena McKendrick, Theatre in Spain 1490-1700 (Cambridge University Press, 1989). Especially chapters 2 "From Drama to Theatre, pp 41-72 and chapter 7 "The Corrales and Their Audiences," 178-209.

Eric Nicholson, "The Theatre," in A History of Women in the West, ed. George Duby and Michelle Perrot (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1993) 309-14.

UNIT II: THE ITALIAN CONTEXT

Session 5: The Early Italian Context: The 16th Century Background on the different genres in existence, especially the commedia erudita, the commedia dell'arte, the pastoral, and emerging musical performances, intermezzi as proto opera.
In class segments of Ettore Scola's film "Il viaggio di Capitano Fracassa" are shown.

Readings:
M. A. Katrizky, "The Commedia dell'arte: An Introduction," in Theatre Research International, Vol 23:no.2, summer 1998, pp. 99-103.

Helen Cole and Toby Krich Chinoy, Actors on Acting (New York: Crown Publishers Inc, 1970) chapter IV, pp. 41-63.

Relevant chapters in A. M. Nagler, A Source Book in Theatrical History (New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1952).

Louise George Clubb, Italian Drama in Shakespeare's Time, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989) 264-271.

Supplementary Readings:

"The Tragic Events," commedia dell'arte scenario in Flaminio Scala's compilation, pp. 128-134.

Supplementary readings may include Niccolo Machiavelli's Mandragola (if students familiarity is limited on commedia errudita).

Session 6: The Representation of Women on stage in the Commedia dell'Arte.
The represented space of the piazza is discussed: the urban space as gendered male, as apparent in Scolnicov and Chojnacka's retort. Limitation or liminality at the window?

Readings: Hanna Scolnicov, Woman's Theatrical Space (Cambridge University Press, 1994), especially "Woman's Theatrical Space," pp 1-11 and "The Woman in the Window," pp 49-68.

Monica Chojnacka, "Beyond the Contrade: Women and Mobility," in Working Women of Early Modern Venice (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 103-120.

Session 7: Power Play: The Power Wielded by the Commedia dell'Arte Actress.
How much power does the commediante actually wield? To what extent is the window a liminal space commensurating between the market, open gendered piazza and the domestic sphere?

Readings: "The Madness of Isabella" scenario to be studied from Flaminio Scala's Il teatro delle favole rappresentative, 1611
trans. In Scenarios of the Commedia dell'Arte, Henry F. Salerno (New York: Limelight Editions, 1996).

Jane Tylus, "Women at the Windows: Commedia dell'arte and Theatrical Practice in Early Modern Italy," Theatre Journal, 49 (1997), pp. 323-342.

Session 8: The 1589 events - Key women performers: Isabella Andreini, Vittoria Piissimmi, and Vittoria Archilei.
Improvisation in general as a contribution of the woman actor. Compare with Archilei and limitation imposed on proto-operatic singers.

Readings: Tim Carter, "Finding a Voice: Vittoria Archilei and the Florentine 'New Music,'" in Oxford Readings in Feminism, ed. Lorna Hutson (Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 450-467.

Kathleen McGill, "Women and Performance: The Development Of Improvisation by the Sixteenth-Century Commedia dell'Arte," Theatre Journal 43 (1991) 59-69.

Karen Newman, "The Politics of Spectacle: La Pellegrina and the Intermezzi Of 1589," MLN 101, no 1 (Jan 1986) pp 95-113. Selected segments from James M. Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi (New Haven: Yale UP, 1996).

Session 9: Summing up the 1589 performances: who patronized the events in actuality? To what extent have women's contributions been "written out" of the performances' accounts?

Readings: Carla Freccero, "Gender Ideologies, Women Writers and the Problem of Patronage in Early Modern Italy and France: Issues and Frameworks," in Reading the Renaissance: Culture, Poetics, and Drama, Ed. Jonathan Hart, (New York: Garland Publications, 1996), pp 65- 74.

Session 10: The Pastoral Genre: Woman as Rape Victim or Object of Male Fantasy -The Limits and Possibilities of a Genre.

Readings: Louise George Clubb, "The Making of the Pastoral Play: Italian experiments between 1573 and 1590," in Italian Drama in Shakesepeare's Time, pp. 93-124.

Selections will include reading passages from Tasso's Aminta for comparison.

Session 11: Appropriating the Pastoral: Isabella Andreini's Experimentation with "Comic Pastoral" ?!

Readings: Segments from la Mirtilla, (1588) by Isabella Andreini. Segments provided and also available in:
Laura Anna Sartoni and Mary Prentice Lillie, trans, Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies and Courtesans (New York: Italica Press, 1997), pp. 221-248.

Session 12: Other Contexts: the convents / The Jewish community

Readings: Elissa Weaver, "Spiritual Fun: A Study of Sixteenth Century Tuscan Convent Drama" in Mary Beth Rose, ed., Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Syracuse UP, 1986).

Selections from Leone de'Sommi's A Comedy of Betrothal (ca. 1561-1567) originally in Hebrew Tsahoth B'dihutha d'Kiddushin, trans. Alfred S. Golding, A Comedy of Betrothal for the Carleton Renaissance Plays in Translation series (Dovehouse: Ottowa, 1988).

Session 13: Subverting the Expected: Inquisition Records as "Performances"?

Readings: Selections from Cecilia Ferrazzi's inquisition records in Cecilia Ferrazzi, Autobiography of an Aspiring Saint, ed. and Trans. Anne Jacobson Schutte, for The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

On "performance" and "performativity," see Victor Turner and Richard Schechner. Victor Turner, "Are There Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual, and Drama?" in By Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies Of Theatre and Ritual, ed. Richard Schechner and Willa Appel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 8-18.

Session 14: Other women's work as performance: the self presentation of the courtesan; portraiture as performance: the works of Girolamo Musiano, Soffanisba Anguissola and others.

Readings: Selections from Veronica Franco and from Isabella Andreini's letters (found in Rosenthal and Sartoni, respectively).

Brian Steele, "In the Flower of Their Youth: 'Portraits' of Venetian Beauties" Sixteenth Century Journal XXVIII:2, 1997.

Second Assignment: Students may choose to work on any one of the texts or Images from this early Italian period and answer one of the following Questions in a well organized, 5-6 page paper (criteria for writing, citations To be given in class).

1. Select one of the texts we have studied this semester and discuss the extent to which the debate regarding women's worth, status and creative ability is apparent within the work?

2. In what ways can the "languages of the stage" (physical presence of actors, movement, costume, stage/audience inter dynamics, women on the stage, etc…) emphasize the presence of women and the querelle in ways in which the language of the dramatic text do not? You may choose to focus on one play text we have read or compare two. You may also discuss a performative text that is not a dramatic text.

3. You may choose a creative project and couple this with a written summation of your project. Present an in-class performance of a scene from those which we have read which you find highlights some of the main issues raised by the querelle des . You may adapt a scene, modernizing it for a contemporary audience and finding equivalent issues drawn from today's world. You may also consider how techniques such as "transformation scenes,"and gender bending by cross dressing raise questions with regards to the stability of gender/sexual identity. How can these techniques relate to questions such as those raised by the querelle? Submit a 3-4 page self-evaluation/summation of your project indicating both the way in which the project is relevant for the course and the specific goals you sought to reach through the enactment. Project is to be presented on the session on week 15.

Session 15: Presentation in class of the projects and summation of the Italian unit.

UNIT III: THE FRENCH CONTEXT

Session 16: The French stage and Italian influences on it in the 17th Century. The Comediens Italiens, French fairground performance, the introduction of the character Columbine, female version of commedia dell'arte's Harlequin.

Readings: Isabelle Medecin (1685 performance) segments trans. for class use, the French text is available in Evaristo Gherardi's Le Theatre Italien vol I (Paris: Cusson et Witte, 1700).

Virginia Scott, "Les Filles Errantes: Emancipated Women at the Comedie Italienne, 1683-1691" in Laurence Senelick, ed., Gender In Performance: The Presentation of Difference in the Performing Arts (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1992), 101-116.

Selections from Pierre Louis Duchartre's The Italian Comedy (New York: Dover Publications, 1966); Kenneth and Laura Richards, The Commedia dell'Arte (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).

Virginia Scott, "La Virtu et la Volupte: Models for the Actress in Early Modern Italy and France, " Theatre Research International, Vol 23 no 2, pp. 152-158.

Session 17: Madame de Villedieu (nee Marie-Catherine Desjardins) is introduced, her contribution discussed.

Readings: Villedieu's play, The Favourite Minister (Le Favori), 1665. In Perry Gethner, ed. The Lunatic Lover and Other Plays by French Women of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1994).

Session 18: Moliere: Pour ou Contre? Villedieu, Moliere and the querelle Revisited. Salons, Salon Culture and "Preciosite" as "female" forms.

Readings: Moliere, The Learned Ladies (1672), trans. Richard Wilbur (New York: Harcourt, 1977). Moliere, The Precious Damsels, trans. Morris Bishop

Session 19: Summation of Unit II and in class assignment.

Readings: Margaret J.M. Ezell, "The Myth of Judith Shakespeare" in Writing Women's Literary History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993), Focusing especially on 44-48.

Third Assignment: In a well organized paper which students can either write in class or have ready for turning in in class, consider the following: compare the differing conclusions regarding women in the early modern period offered by Virginia Wolf and by Margaret Ezell. Does Mme. de Villedieu validate Wolf or Ezell's theory? Can she be considered as a model for the woman in theatre in the early modern period at all?

UNIT IV: THE ENGLISH CONTEXT

Session 20: England - contradictions and paradoxes. The importance of court performances and the absence of women from the public theatre stage. Elizabeth's image making is discussed and slides of the following portraits shown:
"The Ermine Portrait" by Nicholas Hilliard (at Hatfield House) "Coronation Portrait" and "The Rainbow Portrait" reprinted in
Frances Yates, The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975).

Readings: S. P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne Davies, "'From Myself, My Other Self I Turned:' An Introduction," in Gloriana's Face: Women Public and Private, in the English Renaissance.

Michael Shapiro, "The Introduction of Actresses in England: Delay or Defensiveness?" in Bibiana Comensoli and Anne Rusell, eds., Enacting Gender on the English Renaissance Stage (University of Illinois Press, 1999), 177-200.

Session 21: A look back to the early 17th Century. Court Masques and the contribution of Queen Anne and Queen Henrietta Maria.

Readings: The Masque of Queens (1609) by Ben Jonson with Queen Anne. In David Lindley, ed., Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 1605-1640 (Oxford UP, 1995).

Wynne-Davies, Marion, "The Queen's Masque: Renaissance Women and the Seventeenth-Century Court Masque" in S.P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne- Davies, eds., Gloriana's Face: Women, Public and Private, in the English Renaissance (New York: Harvester, 1992).

Session 22: Race and Gender - The Masque of Blackness.

Readings: The Masque of Blackness (1605) In David Lindley's Court Masques.

Andrea, Bernadette, "Black Skin, The Queen's Masques: Africanist Ambivalence and Feminine Author(ity) in the Masque of Blackness and Beauty" in English Literary Renaissance (1999) vol 29 no 2 pp 246-281.

Session 23: Race and Gender continued: The Case of Elizabeth Cary. Catholicism and women's theatrical expression.

Readings: Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedy of Mariam, Queen of Jewry, Ed. Margaret Ferguson and Barry Weller (Berkeley: UC Press, 1994).

Ros Ballaster, "The First Female Dramatists" in Women and Literature In Britain 1500-1700, ed. Helen Wilcox (Cambridge 1996) pp 267-290.

Rosemary Kegl, "Theatres, Households, and a 'kind of history' in Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam," in Enacting Gender on the English Renaissance Stage, ed. bibiana Comensoli and Anne Russell, (University of Illinois Press, 1999) pp. 135-153.

Session 24: The Case of "Closet Drama:" Fact or Fiction?
A discussion of the benefit of the sub-generic appellation "closet drama" followed by a discussion and reading of segments of Cary and of Cavendish and Brackley. Interregnum writing is discussed.

Readings: Jane Cavendish and Elizabeth Brackley, The Concealed Fancies (1645) rpt in Renaissance Drama by Women: Texts and Documents, eds. S. P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies, (London: Routledge, 1996).

Session 25: The Restoration: Women on Stage!

Readings: P. A. Skantze, "The Lady Eve, or Who's On First?" in Maggie Gale and Susan Bassnett.

Session 26: Aphra Behn, The Rover

Readings: The Rover

Session 27: Aphra Behn negotiating today: modern adaptations of The Rover.
Video shown in Class.

Readings: Susan Carlson, "Aphra Behn's The Emperor of the Moon: Staging Seventeenth-Century Farce for Twentieth-Century Tastes" in Essays in Theatre/ Etudes Theatrales, vol 14 no2, 1996, pp. 117-130.

Session 28: Conclusion.
A good exercise I like to end with is asking the students to take out a piece of paper and write the name of one person/thinker/playwright who they felt "guided" them through their journey during the course. Often, students
write of the guiding spirit of Virginia Woolf, for example.