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The original-practices movement as a whole claims its authority from early modern theatrical conditions. Some practitioners claim Shakespeare in many ways as their co-creator; asserting that they perform the plays as Shakespeare intended. Other companies recognize the impossibility of an authorial text, and for them authority shifts to the Renaissance

The original-practices movement as a whole claims its authority from early modern theatrical conditions. Some practitioners claim Shakespeare in many ways as their co-creator; asserting that they perform the plays as Shakespeare intended. Other companies recognize the impossibility of an authorial text, and for them authority shifts to the Renaissance theatre apparatus as a whole. But the reality is that all of these companies necessarily produce modern theatre influenced by the 400 years since Shakespeare. Likewise, audiences do not come to these productions and forget the intervening centuries. This dissertation questions the new tradition created by using early modern performance practices, asking how original-practices theatre is situated and arguing that though the desire to rediscover the past fueled the movement, the productions actually presented are in negotiation with modernity. The dissertation begins by looking at the rhetoric surrounding the original-practices movement, then at the physical aspects of early modern performance recreated for modern stages and the desire for material authenticity. This project also explores the ways in which race and gender play key roles within Shakespearean texts presented on stage, and argues that while gender occasionally has attention called to it, race is nearly always ignored to the point of whitewashing. I argue that because these companies insist on the universality of Shakespeare, they need to examine and deal with the racism and sexism inherent within the plays. Finally, this project explores the influence original-practices productions exerts upon audiences, including aspects such as attendees' expectations, architectural spaces, and performance, and argues that together, these elements lead to a far more cohesive and responsive audience than that which is found at traditional theatre performances. This interactivity and group mentality can lead to thrilling theatre, but can also pose dangers in the form of positive responses to xenophobic, racist, or misogynist elements within the texts, acting as early-modern audiences did and reifying those negative stereotypes and prejudices. While original-practices theatre includes the danger of being something only of historical interest, it also presents opportunities for exciting, progressive theatre that reaches audiences who do not typically go to see Shakespeare or other performances.
ContributorsSteigerwalt, Jennifer L (Author) / Thompson, Ayanna (Thesis advisor) / Ryner, Brad (Committee member) / Fox, Cora (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
“Trauma, Typology, and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern England” explores the connection between the biblical exegetical mode of typology and the construction of traumatic historiography in early modern English anti-Catholicism. The Protestant use of typology—for example, linking Elizabeth to Eve--was a textual expression of political and religious trauma surrounding the English

“Trauma, Typology, and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern England” explores the connection between the biblical exegetical mode of typology and the construction of traumatic historiography in early modern English anti-Catholicism. The Protestant use of typology—for example, linking Elizabeth to Eve--was a textual expression of political and religious trauma surrounding the English Reformation and responded to the threat presented by foreign and domestic Catholicism between 1579 and 1625. During this period of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, English anti-Catholicism began to encompass not only doctrine, but stereotypical representations of Catholics and their desire to overthrow Protestant sovereignty. English Protestant polemicists viewed themselves as taking part in an important hermeneutical process that allowed their readers to understand the role of the past in the present. Viewing English anti-Catholicism through the lens of trauma studies allows us greater insight into the beliefs that underpinned this religio-political rhetoric.

Much of this rhetorical use of typology generated accessible associations of Catholics with both biblical villains and with officials who persecuted and executed Protestants during the reign of Mary I. These associations created a typological network that reinforced the notion of English Protestants as an elect people, while at the same time exploring Protestant religio-political anxiety in the wake of various Catholic plots. Each chapter explores texts published in moments of Catholic “crisis” wherein typology and trauma form a recursive loop by which the parameters of the threat can be understood. The first chapter examines John Stubbs’s Discovery of a Gaping Gulf (1579) and his views of Protestant female monarchy and a sexualized Catholic threat in response to Elizabeth I’s proposed marriage to the French Catholic Duke of Anjou. The second chapter surveys popular and state responses to the first Jesuit mission to England in 1580. The final chapters consider the place of typology and trauma in works by mercantilist Thomas Milles in response to recusant equivocation following the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and in Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess (1624) as a response to the failure of marriage negotiations between the Protestant Prince Charles and the Catholic Spanish Infanta.
ContributorsKimbro, Devori (Author) / Hawkes, David (Thesis advisor) / Fox, Cora (Thesis advisor) / Ryner, Bradley (Committee member) / Irish, Bradley (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
Glocal thinking redistributes Shakespeare’s cultural capital and reimagines Shakespeare studies as a multiplex and integrative network without an original, authoritative Shakespeare at its center. Local Shakespeare criticism focuses exclusively on local place and culture, whereas global Shakespeare explores local adaptations with an international scope that risks homogenizing local identities. I

Glocal thinking redistributes Shakespeare’s cultural capital and reimagines Shakespeare studies as a multiplex and integrative network without an original, authoritative Shakespeare at its center. Local Shakespeare criticism focuses exclusively on local place and culture, whereas global Shakespeare explores local adaptations with an international scope that risks homogenizing local identities. I challenge the local/global dichotomy and submit that Shakespearean adaptations are never either global or local. Instead, they are always already glocal insofar as they are translated and performed in a culturally and technologically interconnected network of local and global Shakespeare users. I argue that the intercultural processes of adaptation constitute non-Anglophone Shakespeares as culturally, temporally, and spatially glocal. I hope to show that glocal methodologies in marginalized countries like Albania, which historically lack scholarly attention, are necessary to defuse Shakespeare’s global authority over localities. To reveal how adaptations are multitemporal, multispatial, and multicultural, I employ Jonathan Gil Harris’ palimpsest metaphor which traces both past and present meanings in cultural objects. Specifically, I examine the palimpsestic nature of adaptations through socio-political constructs in translations and performances of Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and II Henry VI from pre-communist to post-communist Albania. Shakespeare critics need a glocal methodology that reciprocates the palimpsestic nature of non-Anglophone Shakespeare adaptations in order to better understand the adaptations and value their contributions to the field.
ContributorsGolemi, Marinela (Author) / Thompson, Ayanna (Thesis advisor) / Irish, Bradley (Thesis advisor) / Fox, Cora (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021