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Memory, Conflict & Commerce in Early Modern Europe
No full textThis is a solid and compelling collection of articles dedicated to the themes of conflict, memory and language in early modern English theatre and poetry. Shakespeare is the main focus of most of the papers, but there are welcome deviations from this rule, either as complements to the discussion (usually other early modern dramatists, who are dealt with in varying degrees of detail) or as independent objects of investigation (John Donne’s poetry in Margaret Edson’s Wit).
In the two essays having more directly to do with memory, “Memory of Tragedy” and “This is my play’s last scene”, memory is illuminatingly exercised from different temporal positions, in one case as the early modern memory of tragedy and in the other as the contemporary moment’s memory of early modern poetry. However, in “Memory of Tragedy”, some additional bibliographical support would be welcome. The use of the concept of memory, which is central to the article, would benefit from explicit grounding in cultural or collective memory studies. The article could also be improved by a conclusion bringing together, under the theme of the memory of tragedy, the several variants of tragedy discussed throughout the paper. “This is my play’s last scene”, which also deals, though more implicitly, with forms of memory, is an engaging and compelling essay about the central role played by John Donne’s poetry in a contemporary play, Margaret Edson’s Wit. The close attention devoted to poetic detail, which is itself a theme in Wit, neatly brings out the relations between Donne’s poetry and Edson’s play, while linking this paper to the remaining ones.
Whereas “Memory of Tragedy” discusses issues of genre, “As You (Don’t) Like It” focuses on plotting. By means of a structural analysis of central aspects of the plots of As You Like It, King Lear and Hamlet, the author proposes a convincing account of the importance of heterotopic spaces in the movement towards the restitution of order in all three plays. The shift from As You Like It, where an effective restoration does occur, to the two tragedies, where this restoration is complicated and eventually cancelled by contingency, is itself historicised as a general transition from “‘cyclical-temporal’ myth-making into ‘discrete-linear’ plot-making” (Lotman).
A common link between these papers is the attention devoted to language and form. This focus is attained not at the cost of history, but rather in close connection with it. In its attention to issues of poetic language, this collection of articles strikes a welcome note in a field which, in recent times, has frequently disparaged attention to form as mere formalism. The importance of analysing the language of these texts in detail is especially borne out in the remaining three articles of this collection. “NEW LANGUAGES” is a fascinating, and bibliographically supported, discussion of the transformations undergone in the use of rhetoric during the early modern period, as exemplified in and mapped out by a number of history plays from this time. The relations between rhetoric, truth, value and power are brought out through a persuasive discussion of specific moments from Shakespeare’s Second Tetralogy as well as from John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck. “The Insults of The Merchant of Venice”, on the other hand, makes a forceful and amply demonstrated case for understanding insults in The Merchant of Venice as profoundly and disturbingly different from other, more playful types of insults in the Shakespearean canon. This article needs some editing (especially because of incomplete references) and matters of style should occasionally be attended to, namely in the first paragraph (the phrase “I started a paper” is used several times without variation). In section 3, the paragraph containing the final sequence of words as well as their dictionary meanings may perhaps be tightened in terms of its structure. Although these words and their meanings are all motivated by the central connection which is made between insults and rating, their brief appearance in quick succession seems occasionally gratuitous. The final article in this collection, “With all my Heart”, also focuses on The Merchant of Venice. In what is an admirably pursued and amply footnoted source study, the author reconsiders the motif of the pound of flesh in The Merchant of Venice, and more specifically of Antonio’s heart, by bringing out its double-edged signification. This contextual approach moreover benefits from being carried out through a close analysis of emblem books and accounts of public executions in early modern England, while also paying attention to other, more canonically established narrative sources
Memory, Conflict & Commerce in Early Modern Europe: An Introduction
No full textModels of civic and cultural excellence have constantly been associated with early modern Europe and the European Renaissance continues to be regarded as a paragon of intellectual unity and integrity. The notion of model and paragon involves praise and a desire for emulation, regardless of whether the values associated with them remain ideal or are carried out. How early modern intellectuals approached theory and praxis, how they discussed power and beauty, truth and cunning, wars and alliances, how they thought their country should position itself in the European geopolitical atlas still appeals to the contemporary mind. Understanding the reasons for the permanence of the model and paragon, their significance in our age and their relevance to present-day conjectures about a common worldwide society is the aim of this study
Personal Helicon
No full text“Personal Helicon,” by Seamus Heaney. Translated by Millôr Fernandes and Rui Carvalho Homem.“Personal Helicon,” by Seamus Heaney. Translated by Millôr Fernandes and Rui Carvalho Homem
Aptly fitted and naturally perform'd: dramatic performativity and the study of humor in Patrícia Fagundes's A Megera Domada
Get PDFDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura CorrespondentePeças teatrais podem ser consideradas tanto literatura como performance. Isso significa que elas têm força, autoridade tanto na forma de texto escrito (drama), como na forma de ação encenada (performance). A literatura, instituição baseada na pretensa estabilidade da palavra escrita, costuma simplificar o teatro à apenas drama, especialmente em se tratando de autores canônicos como William Shakespeare. Considerando tal contexto, a presente investigação analisa a relação entre linguagens verbais e não-verbais em performance teatral baseada em texto dramático, visando entender o processo que transforma o texto dramático em comportamento teatral (de acordo com o conceito de W. B. Worthen de dramatic performativity). Especificamente, esta investigação analisa os elementos verbais e não-verbais usados para produzir humor na tradução de The Taming of the Shrew, de Beatriz Viégas-Faria, e na encenação de A Megera Domada dirigida por Patrícia Fagundes e encenada em 2008, em Porto Alegre, pela Cia. Rústica. Os parâmetros conceituais utilizados nessa investigação são determinados por Worthen (2003), Patrice Pavis (1995) e Richard Schechner (2003, 2006), sendo que a análise da produção teatral é baseada na teoria de mise en scène de Pavis (1995).Theatre plays enjoy a status of both dramatic literature and performance. This means that they have force, authority as both written texts (drama) and staged action (performance). Literature, an institution base based on a pretense stability of the written word, tends to reduce theatre to drama, especially when it concerns canonic authors such as William Shakespeare. In face of this context, the present investigation analyzes the relation between verbal and non-verbal languages in stage performance of scripted drama, aiming at understanding the process to which the dramatic text is subject in order to be transformed into stage behavior (according to W. B. Worthen's concept of "dramatic performativity"). More specifically, it analyzes the verbal and non-verbal elements used to construct humor, in Beatriz Viégas-Faria's translation of The Taming of the Shrew and in Patrícia Fagundes's staging of A Megera Domada, performed in 2008, in Porto Alegre, by Cia Rústica. The conceptual parameters that guide this investigation are drawn mainly from Worthen (2003), Patrice Pavis (1995) and Richard Schechner (2003, 2006), being the approach to the theatrical activity based on Pavis's (1995) theory of mise en scène
Ekphrasis as Portrait: A. S. Byatt’s Fictional and Visual Doppelgänger
No full textEkphrasis is a highly codified conceptual site which hosts enquiries into logo-centrism, aesthetic autonomy, and the interplay of description and narration. Post-modern ekphrasis reveals mutations of the structural and thematic constants which have been constitutive since antiquity. With A.S. Byatt ekphrasis challenges the tradition of the painterly and of the literary portrait. She recuperates the rhetorical and literary ekphrastic tradition in order to shift the emphasis from the ‘content of ekphrasis’ to ‘ekphrasis as container.’ Portraits in Fiction bears witness to my contention that the question post-modern writers pose is no longer what can be in ekphrasis? but what can ekphrasis be? The critical discourse on visual and verbal modes of portraying developed in Portraits in Fiction demonstrates that ekphrasis is both a container and a maker of visual images, meta-artistic inquiry, logo-centrism and, more intriguingly, narration
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
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