Holistic Shakespeare: An Experiential Learning Approach - Softcover

Charlton, Debra

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1841504718 ISBN 13: 9781841504711

Verlag: Intellect Books, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

Shakespeare's plays are staples of the classroom. Yet too often they are taught as antiquated works of literature with little reference to their theatrical life and enduring human themes. Applying the methodologies of the holistic education model to the study of four Shakespearean plays - Othello, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Measure for Measure - Holistic Shakespeare offers lively theatre-based activities to complement traditional analytical exercises. In keeping with the aims of holistic education, each play is studied in relation to a particular social or ethical topic addressed in the work. Despite abundant scholarly works in the field of Shakespeare studies, few texts combine analytical and creative learning methodologies - and none before has specifically applied the principles of holistic education to the topic. Accessible to both teachers and learners, this book will be an essential tool for making Shakespeare come to life in the classroom.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Debra Charlton is director of graduate studies in theater at Texas State University.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Holistic Shakespeare

An Experiential Learning Approach

By Debra Charlton

Intellect Ltd

Copyright © 2012 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84150-471-1

Contents

Preface, 
Introduction, 
Chapter 1: Thinking Like Shakespeare, 
Chapter 2: Stages of Green: A Midsummer Night's Dream, 
Chapter 3: The Morality of Power: Measure for Measure, 
Chapter 4: The Rhetoric of Hate: Othello, 
Chapter 5: Art, Science, and Mysticism: The Tempest, 
Resources for Further Learning, 
Bibliography and Materials for Additional Study, 
Glossary of Terms, 

CHAPTER 1

Thinking Like Shakespeare

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable, in action, how like an angel, in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world; the paragon of animals....

(Hamlet, II, ii, 303–7)

Shakespeare was a quintessential holistic thinker. Nature had gifted him with an extraordinary aptitude to navigate fluidly between the realms of intellect and imagination. Through his dramatic writing, Shakespeare found the ideal vehicle for the exploration and refinement of his abundant talents. Even the playwright's contemporaries marveled at his twin facility for deep intellectual engagement and creative expressiveness. In the memorial First Folio, fellow actor Richard Condell wrote, "[Shakespeare's] hand and mind went together, and what he thought, he uttered with that easiness that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers." Of course, such effort comes harder for ordinary mortals. In the modern Shakespeare classroom, encouraging modes of thought more closely aligned with the playwright's holistic mindset can optimize students' mental flexibility, comprehension, and receptivity. By learning to think like Shakespeare, we can acquire a deeper appreciation and enjoyment of his plays.

Poised on the Corpus Callosum

Both Shakespeare's cultural environment and his natural gifts contributed to his exceptional intellectual flexibility. Borrowing from the parlance of modern neuroscience, Shakespeare might be described as "intellectually ambidextrous." Mental-sidedness or dexterity refers to a person's natural inclination toward either right- or left-brain thinking. Of course, everyone is born with the potential to utilize both right- and left-brain functions. Everyday life demands constant transition and communication between cerebral regions in order to accomplish the myriad tasks that require our attention. Just as a dance teacher or an athletic coach can train students to fully utilize both sides of the body despite dominant physical sidedness, an intellectually open classroom setting can also cultivate mental ambidexterity in students. The holistic Shakespeare classroom both requires and encourages this open and intellectually flexible learner.

As children, uninhibited imaginative play, centered predominantly in right-brain modalities, is encouraged and rewarded. But when youngsters enter school, they quickly discover that most conventional instruction favors left-brain learners. Consequently, early learners make unconscious efforts to harness their uniqueness and individuality to fit within the narrow confines of the traditional classroom. Self-labeling and conformity are the inevitable results, producing vestigial learners who are inhibited from accessing their full intellectual capacity (Rubenzer 1982). Holistic teaching seeks to reunify this vestigial learner.

Brain functions are divided into two distinct but complementary hemispheres, each governing specific skills and ways of processing information (see Molfese and Segalowitz, 1988). Organically, the left side of the brain controls linear, analytical thinking, stores and processes facts and details, and develops problem-solving strategies. The left-brain also facilitates categorization and labeling and allows for comprehension of the past and present. Classroom activities that rely on left-brain functions promote precision, logic, and orderliness. In Shakespeare studies, students might engage this area of the brain through scansion and scoring exercises that foster recognition of language patterns, parts, and groupings, or by compiling data that compares everyday living conditions in Elizabethan England with those of the modern era. Most mathematicians and scientists incline naturally toward left-brain thinking. In contrast, many people with artistic temperaments gravitate toward right-brain activities and thought patterns. Right-brain-sidedness governs abstract thought, artistic ability, and spatial awareness. It allows appreciation of the whole, grasps interdependences between parts of instructional material, facilitates conceptual and abstract thinking, expresses states of being, and is future oriented. Right-brain learners tend to favor subjective and imaginative classroom activities and demonstrate a natural proclivity for interpretive exercises and theoretical content. Teachers of Shakespeare might develop right-brain learning by eliciting students' personal readings of symbolism or imagery, or encourage proclivity for spatial awareness through hands-on exercises like set design, movement activities, or stage blocking. Visualization, music, dance, and other sensory-based media, rather than language, are powerful resources for tapping into the right-brained student's potential for nonverbal learning.

The topic of brain hemispheric functions has sparked a wealth of provocative literature in the past decade, including Daniel Pink's phenomenal bestseller, A Whole New Brain: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age (2005). Recent science has made significant advances in deciphering the correlation between language cognition and brain regions, and proven that brain hemispheric lateralization is not as fixed and compartmentalized as previously believed (see Sahin, Pinker, Cash, Schomer, and Halgren 2009). The human brain has been likened to a parallel processor because of its ability to simultaneously receive and process stimuli in opposing cerebral regions. Language studies have revealed, for example, that expressive vocalization, which includes inflection, intonation, pitch, stress, and rhythm (essential tools for effective communication and performance) is usually lateralized in the right brain, while literal language functions like grammar and vocabulary most often originate in the left brain (see Pinker 1994; Deacon 1997; Brown and Hagoort 2001). Some language functions, however, appear to be controlled bilaterally. Thus coherent and expressive verbal communication, like most other human activities, requires free access to both sides of the brain. Anatomically, the corpus callosum, a band of connective neural fibers, links left- and right-brain hemispheres. In the holistic Shakespeare classroom, students are encouraged to envision themselves as poised on that vital cerebral bridge, ready to travel along this open pathway between discrete ways of learning.

The Holistic Triad: Wholeness, Interconnectivity, and Embodiment

As discussed in the Introduction, holistic classroom Shakespeare embraces three core values: wholeness, interconnectivity, and embodiment. A cultural environment that placed value on systemic thought and cultivation of the WHOLE individual enhanced Shakespeare's natural proclivity for holistic thought. Contrary to popular misconceptions, holistic ideology is not a New Age phenomenon; its roots stretch back to the classical era when great thinkers including...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Intellect Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1841504718
• ISBN 13: 9781841504711
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 184
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland