Joanna Baillie’s De Monfort: A Crisis of Class Identity (original) (raw)
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Portents, Horrors, Fatal Attractions. The Gothic Menace on Late-Eighteenth-Century English Stages
Sezione Di Lettere, 2013
, at Drury Lane, James Boaden staged the drama Aurelio and Miranda, adapted from Matthew Gregory Lewis's novel The Monk (1796) 1. This was only the latest of a considerable number of theatrical adaptations drawing on the masterpieces of Gothic narrative: taken all together, a remarkable corpus of great documental as well as, in a few cases, literary significance 2. The study of variants and constants between Gothic novels and their theatrical adaptations can certainly help to shed light on the hiatus between page and stage in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, as regards both the presentation and treatment of the specific themes and motifs of a genre and, in a broader sense, the gap between what was considered to be formally and morally acceptable for a written text and what conventional norms allowed playwrights, who worked under «a […] censorship that maintained absolute standards of eighteenth-century morality» 3. This comparison can be carried further, within the context of Gothic literature, regarding various aspects connected to the phenomena of adaptations. In fact, even more stimulating opportunities for reflection arise when we examine the relationship of adaptations with "original" dramas, that is, when we contrast the two peculiarly dissonant faces of the Gothic Drama 4. 1 James Boaden (1762-1839) was a quite successful playwright, as well as a journalist and a biographer of actors and actresses. His biographies include:
2015
In this ground-breaking study Saggini explores the relationship between the late eighteenth-century novel and the theatre, arguing that the implicit theatricality of the Gothic novel made it an obvious source from which dramatists could take ideas. Similarly, she suggests that elements of the theatre – costume, lighting, music and special effects – provided inspiration to novelists. Free intro and index available for perusal here http://www.pickeringchatto.com/titles/1531-9781848934146-gothic-novel-and-the-stage Shortlisted for the ESSE Book Awards 2016, Literatures in the English Languages, Category A. Honourable Mention at the ESSE Book Awards 2016, Literatures in the English Languages, Category A.
1999
The elusive term tragicomedy can actually be thought of in two different ways. A wide one without further qualification pertaining to the domain of the theory of genres and that should be placed side by side with the contiguous terms of tragedy and comedy, and another one which encompasses its different historical or diachronic realisations and which may appear qualified by other terms such as pastoral, palatine, Fletcherian, drame libre, French neoclassical, romantic or whatever. More frequently, though, the historical realisations of tragicomedy bear labels which do not exhibit any formal mentioning of the actual words tragic or comedy, as is the case with medieval and Renaissance developments such as the miracles, moralities, interludes or humanist plays; or nineteenth century forms of melodrama and its aftermath in the twentieth century: melodrama, drame (Ibsen, Chekhov), epic theatre (Brecht), theatre of cruelty (Artaud) and theatre of the absurd (Ionesco) insofar as these form...
Identity, madness and the abject in The Duchess of Malfi
- „Како си ми?“ - студентската филолошка конференција 2021, Скопје 2022, 2022
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of the 17th century Jacobean tragedy The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster through Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytic theory of the abject. Despite the fact that Kristeva centers around the child’s perceptions (of those around it, and itself), i.e., its identity, growth, and abjection of the mother (the semiotic) in favor of the father (the symbolic order), this critical approach will be solely focused on the tragedy’s titular character, who is also a mother figure. Episodes from the tragedy that question the duchess’s identity, right to rule and deal with her marginalization and torture at the hands of her brothers (the symbolic) and their dialogues will be interpreted through Kristeva’s notions concerning the abjection of the mother and her body, as well as other similar concepts. Main topics of this tragedy such as the Duchess’s social, political and identity and madness will be linked to Kristevan terms and concepts in a comparative and metaphorical manner. Other than providing a psychoanalytic examination of the Duchess, the author will also examine other characters and events from the play.