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Ghosts, Devils, Magicians, and Monsters: Performing the Occult in Early English Drama. ARSC390-083. Course Questions. What do magical onstage moments tell us about religious beliefs, about the imagination, or about cultural attitudes towards difference?
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Ghosts, Devils, Magicians, and Monsters: Performing the Occult in Early English Drama ARSC390-083
Course Questions • What do magical onstage moments tell us about religious beliefs, about the imagination, or about cultural attitudes towards difference? • What do they suggest about the limits of knowledge and science? • How is theater uniquely attuned to the occult? • Ultimately, why are people so interested in mysterious, unexplainable phenomena?
Some Possible Topics • the occult as a symbol of art • the relationships between the occult and science and religion • metatheatricality and dramatic performance • the occult as a marker of cultural difference • nationhood and nationalism • royalty and politics • psychology
Skills • Academic reflection, composition, rhetoric, and argumentation • Intensive reading and thoughtful analysis • Assessment and application of primary sources • Research and documentation • Performance and performance critique
Homework Read course website, especially close reading assignment and samples. Read “Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London” and “Sonnet 86” (available on website, password “magic”). http://udel.edu/~lellock
Group Task Write a definition of “magic.”
Definition of “Magic”from Oxford English Dictionary “The use of ritual activities or observances which are intended to influence the course of events or to manipulate the natural world, usually involving the use of an occult or secret body of knowledge; sorcery, witchcraft.” Compare your group’s definition to this one. What is different? Would you revise your definition of magic based on this version? Consider terms such as illusion, spectacle, trick, ritual, performance.
Renaissance Beliefs • Purgatory and Ghosts • “Euery man and childe that is buried must pay sumwhat for masses and diriges to be song for him or elles they will accuse the dedesfrendes and executours of heresie.” • -- A Supplicacyon for the Beggers written about the year 1529, and (as is believed) by Simon Fish
Ludwig Lavater “We ought not without great cause to suspecte all spirities, and other apparitions.”
Angels, Demons, and Conjurors “And glutted now with learning's golden gifts, He surfeits upon cursed necromancy; Nothing so sweet as magic is to him, Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss: And this the man that in his study sits.” –Marlowe’s Faustus
Miracles and Predestination “We call predestination God's eternal decree, by which he determined with himself what he willed to become of each man.” --John Calvin
Charms image magic, amulets, relics, holy objects, charmed circles, weapon salve, symbols
Paracelsus and the Weapon Salve “Take of moss growing on the head of a thief who has been hanged and left in the air; of real mummy; of human blood, still warm – of each one ounce; of human suet, two ounces; of linseed oil, turpentine, and Armenian bole – of each two drachms. Mix all well in a mortar, and keep the salve in an oblong, narrow urn.”
John Dee, Physician to Queen Elizabeth “This most secret mystery is clearly and perfectly shown in our Monad by the hieroglyphic figure of Taurus, which is here represented, and by that of Mars…” “Oh, my God, how profound are these mysteries!”
Witches “The fearefullaboundinge at this time in this countrie, of these detestable slaves of the Devill, the Witches or enchanters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to dispatch in post, this following treatise of mine…to preasse thereby, so farre as I can, to resolve the doubting harts of many; both that such assaultes of Sathan are most certainly practized, and that the instrumentes thereof, merits most severely to be punished.” King James, Demonologie
Alchemy “Magick is nothing else but the knowledge of the whole course of Nature. …..It openeth unto us the properties and qualities of hidden things, and it teacheth us by the agreement and disagreement of things, either so to sunder them, or else to lay them so together, as thereby we do strange works…. Wherefore, as many of you as come to behold Magick, must be persuaded that the works of Magick are nothing else but the works of Nature, whose dutiful hand-maid Magick is.”GiambattistadellaPorta, Natural Magick, 1658 “Magic comprises the most profound contemplation of the most secret things, their nature, power, quality, substance, and virtues, as well as the knowledge of their whole nature.” Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, De OccultaPhilosophia, 1533
“Æthiopia produces dragons, not so large as those of India, but still, twenty cubits in length.The only thing that surprises me is, how Juba came to believe that they have crests.”–Pliny
WHY? Why is the occult so interesting to us? Why do we constantly try to represent it in art and literature? How do we represent it in art and literature, in particular, in drama and performance? Our big questions
Why did you enroll in this colloquium? What do you hope to learn? Exit Ticket
