In this course we will read Shakespeare's play Pericles carefully and focus on two central concerns: migration and compassion. As the play is set in the Mediterranean Sea, in our time the "deadliest route for refugees and migrants" globally [UNHCR] with more than 3500 people drowning every year, it prompts us to think about the (cultural) fortress that Europe has become. Shakespeare's treatment of the Prince of Tyre, a city which is now deemed unsafe for travel by the Foreign and Commonweatlh Office, reminds us of the Elizabethan's veneration for and fascination with the Eastern Mediterranean world. In this seminar we will probe into the Orientalism that is part of that fascination, and we will think about migration as an experience that links us with the early modern period.
- Dozent/in: Felix Sprang