1,720,957 research outputs found
A fantastic feast: William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus as grotesque
Full text linkCriticism on Titus Andronicus neglects a comprehensive discussion on the play’s grotesque characteristics; likewise, grotesque theorists fail to mention Titus Andronicus when they discuss Shakespearean grotesque. However, Titus Andronicus offers ample images and figures that exemplify the grotesque concepts of hybridity, the comic macabre, the fantastic, the bizarre, and the monstrous, which can be found not only in the script, but also in the play’s source material, Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Ovid significantly influenced the flourishing of the grotesque aesthetic in the Renaissance, as he was extensively read by Nero, whose excavated Domus Aurea contained the “grotto art,” or grottesche, that inspired the grotesque aesthetic. Titus Andronicus particularly exemplifies Mikhail Bakhtin’s detailed exposition on Renaissance grotesque and the carnivalesque, especially the grotesque’s emphasis on feasting, Saturnalias, carnival hell, bodily material, negation, and degradation. Furthermore, the performance history of Titus Andronicus displays an inherent understanding of the play as a grotesque through either a faithful adherence to Shakespeare’s original script and all its grotesque elements or by an avoidance of the grotesque in order to appease the social and artistic sensibilities of particular audiences. The significant performances of Titus Andronicus in the past century reveal that contemporary directors and audiences are now willing to confront and contend with the disruption, shock, disgust, uncomfortable laughter, and wonder that accompanies the grotesque. Special attention is given to productions by Peter Brook, Deborah Warner, Julie Taymor, and Lucy Bailey
Dido American Style: Teaching Rhetorical Tropes for Fun and Profit
Full text linkThrough this paper I aim to help show students, from whatever background they bring to class, how to read Marlowe through his use of particular figures and mannerisms of speech, and, equally as important, I want to foreground the thesis that learning the complexities of the gilded language of the Early Moderns can help students understand the rhetorical challenges they face today in the realms of politics, advertising, and daily concourse. I want to reintroduce to the discipline and introduce to the students at hand Marlowe’s brilliant rhetoric and the rich and complex figures of speech he uses. For students, having a grasp on Marlowe’s language facilitates their development as sharper decoders of our own linguistic productions here in America and beyond
The influence of Vergil's Aeneid on Shakespeare's Henriad
Full text linkShakespeare’s second tetralogy was given the name The Henriad was given that title by Alvin Kernan in recognition of its epic qualities. This thesis is a study of the uniquely Vergilian construction of Shakespeare’s epic. Vergil’s Aeneid and Shakespeare’s Henriad share s similar format and that support the equally nationalistic intent of both epics. The first six books of The Aeneid constitute an epic of return based on the restoration of Aeneas after the death of his father. The second six books, during which Aeneas prosecutes an all-out war with the Latin natives, are cast in the form of an epic of wrath. Henry IV Parts One and Two form the epic of return and Henry V is an epic of wrath condensed into a single play. The theme of kingship is resolved through the restoration of the English throne at Hal coronation. The theme of war is developed along similar lines in The Henriad and Aeneid. Both epics develop military campaigns from inception to bloody conclusion that focus on the morality of wrathful actions in the name of nation. The theme of kings and their development highlights the moral stance of the authors and the nations they attempt to represent in their epics. Richard II, the first play of The Henriad, functions the same as Book Two of The Aeneid. These stories are used to provide context for the epic and provide the basis of grievous wrongs to be righted by the each of the epic heroes. Examining the plays of The Henriad according to their epic form and function demonstrates Shakespeare’s replacement and often inversion of Vergil’s Roman values with his own Elizabethan ethics
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Supramoral satire and the destabilizing power of laughter
Full text linkForwarding the thesis that postmodern satirical laughter expresses and destabilizes society???s arbitrary foundation, this paper conceptualizes the role and method of the contemporary satirist. Disclosing the fictive grounding of society, supramoral laughter discloses the groundless ground of existence, a space devoid of positions of truth and moral validity. Supramoral laughter signals the underlying absurdity of existence. Mocking the mechanization and determinateness of cultural constructs, laughter affords the satirist freedom from the weightiness of convention. The paper conceptualizes the satiric disposition by analyzing representations of societal negation in literature and philosophy. The Jew of Malta depicts an example of the postmodern ironic destabilization through the iconoclasm of the protagonist, the supramoral Barabas. Barabas undercuts the structure of morality inherent in the play, indicating its constructive quality, exemplifying the spiteful element prevalent in ironic destructiveness. Soren Kierkegaard???s Concept of Irony explains the function of negative irony in the classification, ???infinite absolute negativity.??? His analysis of Plato???s non-instructional destabilization of society???s assumed actuality provides a abstract framework by which to understand irony???s supramoral methodology. Friedrich Nietzsche???s description of laughter???s liberating power further describes the destabilizing power of laughter, placing it in the context of the weighty philosophical tradition of Truth and morality. These differing expressions of satire and irony gather around a common theme, supramoral laughter is an emotive response to the attenuating power of society???s constraining practices
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Gone goth: feminism and the female revenger in Titus Andronicus and Gone Girl
Full text linkThe main objective of this project is to examine the female revenger in William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. The female revenger often signifies cultural attitudes about a given society, as she exhibits behaviors that indicate male anxieties over what women are capable of. The female revenger is thus an apt vehicle in understanding the shifting status of women through history. Titus Andronicus and Gone Girl are central to this examination. The early modern era is credited with the popularization of the revenger character, and Titus Andronicus presents one of the first developed and central female revengers in an Elizabethan drama. Gone Girl is one of the more recent representations of the female revenger. Both texts rely on similar character tropes as Tamora and Amy utilize motherhood, aggressive sexuality, subjectivity, and several other facets of stereotypical femininity. The differences between the two texts indicate the shift in female subjectivity that allows for success. This examination necessitates a gloss of feminist movements that led to an increase in female agency and subjectivity. Without cultural shifts in attitudes towards women, Gillian Flynn could not have expanded on the female revenger trope popularized by William Shakespeare
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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