Cooper Honors Seminar, “Christopher Marlowe”
Fall 2004

Getting Started on “Expert” Topics

Marlowe and sources:

1. Virgil’s Aeneid, especially Book 4
2. Ovid’s Amores
3. Holinshed’s Chronicles, the story of Edward II
4. the Faust Book

Marlowe’s prosody, the “mighty line”
1. Levinson, Jill. “Working Words: The Verbal Dynamic of Tamburlaine," in Friedenreich (below), 99-116.
2. McDonald, Russ. "Marlowe and style," in Cheney (below), 55-69.

Marlowe in repertory (hands off! this one's mine)
1. Henslowe’s Diary, ed. R. A. Foakes, 2nd ed. Cambridge: CUP, 2002. pp. 16-60 + Marlowe items in the index
2. Knutson, Roslyn L. “Marlowe Reruns,” in Deats and Logan (below), 25-42.
3. McMillin, Scott and Sally-Beth MacLean. The Queen’s Men and their Plays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Marlowe and biography
1. Kuriyama, Constance. Christopher Marlowe: A Renaissance Life. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.
2. Nicholl, Charles. The Reckoning. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co, 1992.

Marlowe and sexuality (gender; manhood; women)
1. Bray, Alan. Homosexuality in Renaissance England. Boston, MA: Gay Men’s Press, 1982, 1988.
2. Smith, Bruce. Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare’s England. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Marlowe and performance (Eliz, modern; film: either Richard Burton's Faustus or the Derek Jarman film of Edward II)
1. Fuller, David. “Tamburlaine the Great in Performance,” in Deats and Logan (below), 61-81
2. Potter, Lois. “Marlowe onstage: the deaths of the author,” in Downie and Parnell (below), 88-101; and "Marlowe in theater and film," in Cheney (below), 262-81.

Marlowe’s influence and reputation
1. Bloom, Harold. Anxiety of Influence. Oxford, OUP, 1973, 1997.
2. Shapiro, James. Rival Playwrights: Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

Marlowe’s texts
1. Kuriyama, Constance.“Dr. Greg and Dr. Faustus: The Supposed Originality of the 1616 Text,” English Literary Renaissance, 5 (1975): 171-97.
2. Maguire, Laurie. "Marlovian texts and authorship," in Cheney (below), 41-54.

Marlowe and genre:

• Tamburlaine and the foreign history/exotics/epic play: Selimus, anon; The Battle of Alcazar, George Peele
• Jew of Malta and the revenge play & moral play: Spanish Tragedy, Thomas Kyd; Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare
• Doctor Faustus and the magician play: Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Robert Greene; The Alchemist, Ben Jonson
• Edward II and the English chronicle play: Woodstock, anon; Richard II, William Shakespeare
• Hero and Leander and the epyllion: Ovid’s Amores, Ovid’s Metamorphoses (stories of Venus and Adonis, Pygmalion), Venus and Adonis, William Shakespeare
  

Anthologies:

Cheney, Patrick, ed. A Companion to Marlowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Deats, Sara Munson and Robert A. Logan, ed. Marlowe’s Empery. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002.
Downie, J. A. and J. T. Parnell, ed. Constructing Christopher Marlowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Friedenreich, Kenneth, and others, ed. A Poet and a Filthy Play-Maker. New York: AMS Press, 1988.
White, Paul W. ed. Marlowe, History, and Sexuality. New York: AMS Press, 1998.