Introduction to Drama combines the literary arts of storytelling and poetry with the world of live performance. As a form of ritual as well as entertainment, drama has served to unite communities and challenge social norms, to vitalize and disturb its audiences. In order to understand this rich art form more fully, we will study and discuss a sampling of plays that exemplify different kinds of dramatic structure; class members will also participate in, attend, and review dramatic performances.

This course is designed as a basic introduction to poetry and/or drama. All resources are in the public domain, or they may be accessed through student/faculty searching sites like poetryfoundation.org. The linked resources are also public domain.

This is a module framework. It can be viewed online or downloaded as a zip file.

As taught in Autumn Semester 2010.

This module is designed to provide an introduction to the analysis and performance of drama. It has three main aims:

1) To provide an introduction to the analysis of drama;
2) To give a taste of the wide range of performance convention in history, from Ancient Greek tragedy to nineteenth-century naturalism;
3) To foreground drama as a performance medium rather than a form of literature.

At Nottingham, we approach drama as a performance medium: an event within a specific time, space and locale, in which real people and objects are presented to other people in real, shared space. It is always a social event, so we learn to think about the people who do the performing, the place they perform in, and the people they perform to. Written texts may be looked at as much for information about the modes and places of performance as for what they represent or ‘say’. It is to be understood that the space itself and the mode of performing in it create meaning as much as do pre-scripted words.

We emphasise the fact that performance analysis is not literary criticism, and that play scripts should not be read simply as texts. The interpretation and analysis of drama requires different skills. The seminars on the module will provide opportunities for you to develop these skills yourself, while the lectures are designed to provide you with the kind of information necessary for an analysis of performance as an event in real historical time and space.

The module also aims to introduce a range of historical examples of theatre practice, drawn from several different moments in theatre history. The lectures will explore what we know about the performance conventions of Greek tragedy, medieval religious plays, Shakespeare's plays and Restoration/Augustan comedy, turning lastly to the arrival of naturalism as an approach to performance in the late nineteenth century.

Finally, we believe that a seminal way of learning to understand how theatre works is getting involved in performance itself. The workshops held in the Autumn semester provide structured opportunities to discuss the kind of decisions that are taken when a script is realised on stage and to experience the practical consequences of a theatre director’s decision making. More information on the format of workshops is provided below.

Suitable for study at undergraduate level 1.

Dr James Moran, School of English Studies.

Dr Moran's research is primarily concerned with modern drama. His monograph Staging the Easter Rising (2005) explores the connections between literature and politics, and was reviewed as 'a brave, confident book' in the Times Literary Supplement and as a 'terrific read' in the Irish Times. He also edited Four Irish Rebel Plays (2007), a volume described as 'fascinating' by Books Ireland and by Studies in Theatre and Performance. His latest monograph, Irish Birmingham: A History (2010), has been published by Liverpool University Press and reviewed as follows in the Irish Times: 'Even if you have no ties with Birmingham, if you are interested in culture or history, you'll enjoy Irish Birmingham: A History...Moran is a splendid writer, and a very engaging one'.

Dr Moran is currently Head of Drama at the University of Nottingham.

This OER packet comprises instructional materials used for ENG 300: Literary Forms and Analysis, a "gateway" course for the English major and minor at Portland State University. It includes handouts, exercises, and a sample syllabus for this course, emphasizing skills of "close reading" and formal analysis, as well as the scholarly study of genre (poetry, fiction, drama, and film). The syllabus and handouts offered in this packet represent only one of many possible approaches to ENG 300. These open access, freely available resources that can be readily adjusted to suit different pedagogical methods. They can also be usefully complemented with additional information about academic writing, argumentation, and the writing process (which, though the primary focus of Portland State University's second "gateway" course for majors, WR 301: Critical Writing and English, can be addressed in ENG 300 at varying levels of depth). or materials. The materials here can be combined with any selection of literary texts.

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.

Emphasis on the analytical reading of lyric poetry in England and the United States. Syllabus usually includes Shakespeare's sonnets, Donne, Keats, Dickinson, Frost, Eliot, Marianne Moore, Lowell, Rich, and Bishop. This subject is an introduction to poetry as a genre; most of our texts are originally written in English. We read poems from the Renaissance through the 17th and 18th centuries, Romanticism, and Modernism. Focus will be on analytic reading, on literary history, and on the development of the genre and its forms; in writing we attend to techniques of persuasion and of honest evidenced sequential argumentation. Poets to be read will include William Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth, William Wordsworth, John Keats, T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, and some contemporary writers.

How do you read a poem? Intuition is not the only answer. In this class, we will investigate some of the formal tools poets use—meter, sound, syntax, word-choice, and other properties of language—as well as exploring a range of approaches to reading poetry, from the old (memorization and reading out loud) to the new (digitally enabled visualization and annotation). We will use readings available online via the generosity of the Poetry Foundation and the Academy of American Poets. We will also think collectively about how to approach difficult poems.

Extensive reading of works by a few major poets. Emphasizes the evolution of each poet's work and the questions of poetic influence and literary tradition. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic for Fall: Does Poetry Matter? Topic for Spring: Gender and Lyric Poetry. From the course home page Course Description The landscape we will explore is the troublesome one of the relevance, impact, and importance of poetry in a troubled modern world. We will read both poetry and prose by several substantial modern writers, each of whom confronted the question that is the subject's title.

A selection of poems, arranged by theme, with a list of poetic terms.

This text offers instruction in analytical, critical, and argumentative writing, critical thinking, research strategies, information literacy, and proper documentation through the study of literary works from major genres, while developing students’ close reading skills and promoting an appreciation of the aesthetic qualities of literature. A culturally responsive OER text incorporating primary literary sources and explanatory materials that would also include ancillary materials such as assignments and essay prompts.

1: Introduction
2: About Creative Nonfiction
3: Creative Nonfiction Readings
4: About Fiction - Short Stories and the Novel
5: Fiction Readings
6: About Poetry
7: Poetry Readings
8: About Drama
9: Drama Readings
10: About Literary Criticism
11: Literary Criticism Readings
12: Writing About Literature
13: Citations and Formatting Guide for Literature (MLA)
14: Literary Devices Glossary