Professor of Early Modern Drama -- Also teach and publish on Comedy, Historical Fiction, Austen, Chaucer, and SF/Fantasy Address: Central Michigan University
Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference, 2014
Like Old Hamlet’s Ghost, William Shakespeare has survived his own death as well as the “death of ... more Like Old Hamlet’s Ghost, William Shakespeare has survived his own death as well as the “death of the author” to emerge as a seemingly immortal figure in his own right. The spectral persistence of the Bard in modern Anglophone culture has been discussed at length by Stephen Greenblatt, Gary Taylor, Douglas Lanier, and many others, who argue that the appearance of Shakespeare as a character in other literary works usually signals nostalgia for 19th century notions of the author as Romantic genius, personal wellspring of the narratives that have captivated centuries of readers. His presence represents the authority and authenticity of the human imagination.
Contemporary speculative fiction, however, by its very nature questions cultural and psychological verities. Shakespeare has made appearances in SF/F novels and short stories for nearly a century now, usually in the context of science-fictional time travel tales; however, several contemporary fantasy authors in particular dispense with the trappings of time travel and recreate Elizabethan England as a suburb of British Faerie, imagining Shakespeare’s encounters with the Fae as the source of his particular genius. There are now enough fantasy novels that feature William Shakespeare in a prominent character role to create a genre in themselves.
Of course, in a sense, even historical fiction about Shakespeare is fantasy, and the very real beliefs in ghosts, demons, witches, and fairies held by most of Shakespeare’s contemporaries would make even a realistic treatment of the poet qualify as literature of the supernatural. The emergence in the last few decades of serious and sustained interest on the part of scholars and artists on both sides of the pond in the pagan wellsprings of English folk traditions have resulted in a number of Britons (and their Anglophile American cousins) studying and practicing what has come to be called the “Faery Faith,” using the scholarship of archaeological, historical, folkloric, and linguistic studies to access ancient Celto-British lore and traditions in the interest of recreating an authentic spiritual and cultural ‘British” experience. Such scholars suggest that a traceable vein of pre-Christian British mysticism feeds all the English poets of the fantastic, from the Gawain-Poet to Gaiman, but lingering especially on Shakespeare.
This trend has had a significant impact on popular depictions of Faerie, which reject the Victorian imagery of feminized sprites, and instead evoke dark, eroticized figures of generational power heavily influenced by both Tolkien’s Elves and Anne Rice’s vampires. Supporting roles played in such fantasies also include Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, the “Dark Lady,” Henry Wriothsley, and Elizabeth herself, often creating a community of humans willingly or unwillingly glamoured into cooperating with the Fae, often in enterprises that represent threats to the sovereignty and mythic heritage of England. My talk will suggest some of these common elements in a few contemporary examples -- Sarah Hoyt’s Shakespearean Fantasies trilogy, Elizabeth Bear’s Promethean Age trilogy, Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’s Shakespeare chapters in the graphic novels series The Sandman, and a new voice, Greer Gilman, who features Shakespeare and Ben Jonson as investigators of supernatural recreants – and will discuss the critique such works provide of the popular cultural icon of Shakespeare as the progenitor of English literature.
While there is ample evidence that students in higher education benefit from an instructor’s judi... more While there is ample evidence that students in higher education benefit from an instructor’s judicious use of humor in lectures and teaching materials, there is less analysis available about the benefits to student critical thinking and communication of making a formal study of the mechanisms of comedy. I created a new, first-year, general-education course for my students titled “Laughing Matters: Comedy and Satire,” because I believe such a topic is truly interdisciplinary, asking students to come to a sophisticated understanding of the interaction of psychological, sociological, historical, cultural, and artistic critical processes, while engaging actively in a classroom dynamic that requires and fosters listening, tolerance, and cooperation. Because the material of performed and literary comedy is often confrontational and offensive, such a course enables students to “lean in” to the discomfort that conversations about racism, sexism, and political debate can cause, armed with a critical apparatus and a meta-discussion of how complex cognitive processes can create productive cultural exchange. I offer descriptions of some of the readings and exercises in the course, with student responses that confirm for me that they value the critical insights developed in this course, enhanced by their enjoyment of the course’s entertaining content.
... The program features an article by Mike Blakemore, media director of Amnesty International, o... more ... The program features an article by Mike Blakemore, media director of Amnesty International, on "prisoners of conscience," another example of the strained attempts by this production to be a modern condemnation of both civil violence and capital punishment. ... Kristen Mcdermott. ...
Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference, 2014
Like Old Hamlet’s Ghost, William Shakespeare has survived his own death as well as the “death of ... more Like Old Hamlet’s Ghost, William Shakespeare has survived his own death as well as the “death of the author” to emerge as a seemingly immortal figure in his own right. The spectral persistence of the Bard in modern Anglophone culture has been discussed at length by Stephen Greenblatt, Gary Taylor, Douglas Lanier, and many others, who argue that the appearance of Shakespeare as a character in other literary works usually signals nostalgia for 19th century notions of the author as Romantic genius, personal wellspring of the narratives that have captivated centuries of readers. His presence represents the authority and authenticity of the human imagination.
Contemporary speculative fiction, however, by its very nature questions cultural and psychological verities. Shakespeare has made appearances in SF/F novels and short stories for nearly a century now, usually in the context of science-fictional time travel tales; however, several contemporary fantasy authors in particular dispense with the trappings of time travel and recreate Elizabethan England as a suburb of British Faerie, imagining Shakespeare’s encounters with the Fae as the source of his particular genius. There are now enough fantasy novels that feature William Shakespeare in a prominent character role to create a genre in themselves.
Of course, in a sense, even historical fiction about Shakespeare is fantasy, and the very real beliefs in ghosts, demons, witches, and fairies held by most of Shakespeare’s contemporaries would make even a realistic treatment of the poet qualify as literature of the supernatural. The emergence in the last few decades of serious and sustained interest on the part of scholars and artists on both sides of the pond in the pagan wellsprings of English folk traditions have resulted in a number of Britons (and their Anglophile American cousins) studying and practicing what has come to be called the “Faery Faith,” using the scholarship of archaeological, historical, folkloric, and linguistic studies to access ancient Celto-British lore and traditions in the interest of recreating an authentic spiritual and cultural ‘British” experience. Such scholars suggest that a traceable vein of pre-Christian British mysticism feeds all the English poets of the fantastic, from the Gawain-Poet to Gaiman, but lingering especially on Shakespeare.
This trend has had a significant impact on popular depictions of Faerie, which reject the Victorian imagery of feminized sprites, and instead evoke dark, eroticized figures of generational power heavily influenced by both Tolkien’s Elves and Anne Rice’s vampires. Supporting roles played in such fantasies also include Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, the “Dark Lady,” Henry Wriothsley, and Elizabeth herself, often creating a community of humans willingly or unwillingly glamoured into cooperating with the Fae, often in enterprises that represent threats to the sovereignty and mythic heritage of England. My talk will suggest some of these common elements in a few contemporary examples -- Sarah Hoyt’s Shakespearean Fantasies trilogy, Elizabeth Bear’s Promethean Age trilogy, Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’s Shakespeare chapters in the graphic novels series The Sandman, and a new voice, Greer Gilman, who features Shakespeare and Ben Jonson as investigators of supernatural recreants – and will discuss the critique such works provide of the popular cultural icon of Shakespeare as the progenitor of English literature.
While there is ample evidence that students in higher education benefit from an instructor’s judi... more While there is ample evidence that students in higher education benefit from an instructor’s judicious use of humor in lectures and teaching materials, there is less analysis available about the benefits to student critical thinking and communication of making a formal study of the mechanisms of comedy. I created a new, first-year, general-education course for my students titled “Laughing Matters: Comedy and Satire,” because I believe such a topic is truly interdisciplinary, asking students to come to a sophisticated understanding of the interaction of psychological, sociological, historical, cultural, and artistic critical processes, while engaging actively in a classroom dynamic that requires and fosters listening, tolerance, and cooperation. Because the material of performed and literary comedy is often confrontational and offensive, such a course enables students to “lean in” to the discomfort that conversations about racism, sexism, and political debate can cause, armed with a critical apparatus and a meta-discussion of how complex cognitive processes can create productive cultural exchange. I offer descriptions of some of the readings and exercises in the course, with student responses that confirm for me that they value the critical insights developed in this course, enhanced by their enjoyment of the course’s entertaining content.
... The program features an article by Mike Blakemore, media director of Amnesty International, o... more ... The program features an article by Mike Blakemore, media director of Amnesty International, on "prisoners of conscience," another example of the strained attempts by this production to be a modern condemnation of both civil violence and capital punishment. ... Kristen Mcdermott. ...
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Papers by Kris McDermott
Contemporary speculative fiction, however, by its very nature questions cultural and psychological verities. Shakespeare has made appearances in SF/F novels and short stories for nearly a century now, usually in the context of science-fictional time travel tales; however, several contemporary fantasy authors in particular dispense with the trappings of time travel and recreate Elizabethan England as a suburb of British Faerie, imagining Shakespeare’s encounters with the Fae as the source of his particular genius. There are now enough fantasy novels that feature William Shakespeare in a prominent character role to create a genre in themselves.
Of course, in a sense, even historical fiction about Shakespeare is fantasy, and the very real beliefs in ghosts, demons, witches, and fairies held by most of Shakespeare’s contemporaries would make even a realistic treatment of the poet qualify as literature of the supernatural. The emergence in the last few decades of serious and sustained interest on the part of scholars and artists on both sides of the pond in the pagan wellsprings of English folk traditions have resulted in a number of Britons (and their Anglophile American cousins) studying and practicing what has come to be called the “Faery Faith,” using the scholarship of archaeological, historical, folkloric, and linguistic studies to access ancient Celto-British lore and traditions in the interest of recreating an authentic spiritual and cultural ‘British” experience. Such scholars suggest that a traceable vein of pre-Christian British mysticism feeds all the English poets of the fantastic, from the Gawain-Poet to Gaiman, but lingering especially on Shakespeare.
This trend has had a significant impact on popular depictions of Faerie, which reject the Victorian imagery of feminized sprites, and instead evoke dark, eroticized figures of generational power heavily influenced by both Tolkien’s Elves and Anne Rice’s vampires. Supporting roles played in such fantasies also include Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, the “Dark Lady,” Henry Wriothsley, and Elizabeth herself, often creating a community of humans willingly or unwillingly glamoured into cooperating with the Fae, often in enterprises that represent threats to the sovereignty and mythic heritage of England. My talk will suggest some of these common elements in a few contemporary examples -- Sarah Hoyt’s Shakespearean Fantasies trilogy, Elizabeth Bear’s Promethean Age trilogy, Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’s Shakespeare chapters in the graphic novels series The Sandman, and a new voice, Greer Gilman, who features Shakespeare and Ben Jonson as investigators of supernatural recreants – and will discuss the critique such works provide of the popular cultural icon of Shakespeare as the progenitor of English literature.
Contemporary speculative fiction, however, by its very nature questions cultural and psychological verities. Shakespeare has made appearances in SF/F novels and short stories for nearly a century now, usually in the context of science-fictional time travel tales; however, several contemporary fantasy authors in particular dispense with the trappings of time travel and recreate Elizabethan England as a suburb of British Faerie, imagining Shakespeare’s encounters with the Fae as the source of his particular genius. There are now enough fantasy novels that feature William Shakespeare in a prominent character role to create a genre in themselves.
Of course, in a sense, even historical fiction about Shakespeare is fantasy, and the very real beliefs in ghosts, demons, witches, and fairies held by most of Shakespeare’s contemporaries would make even a realistic treatment of the poet qualify as literature of the supernatural. The emergence in the last few decades of serious and sustained interest on the part of scholars and artists on both sides of the pond in the pagan wellsprings of English folk traditions have resulted in a number of Britons (and their Anglophile American cousins) studying and practicing what has come to be called the “Faery Faith,” using the scholarship of archaeological, historical, folkloric, and linguistic studies to access ancient Celto-British lore and traditions in the interest of recreating an authentic spiritual and cultural ‘British” experience. Such scholars suggest that a traceable vein of pre-Christian British mysticism feeds all the English poets of the fantastic, from the Gawain-Poet to Gaiman, but lingering especially on Shakespeare.
This trend has had a significant impact on popular depictions of Faerie, which reject the Victorian imagery of feminized sprites, and instead evoke dark, eroticized figures of generational power heavily influenced by both Tolkien’s Elves and Anne Rice’s vampires. Supporting roles played in such fantasies also include Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, the “Dark Lady,” Henry Wriothsley, and Elizabeth herself, often creating a community of humans willingly or unwillingly glamoured into cooperating with the Fae, often in enterprises that represent threats to the sovereignty and mythic heritage of England. My talk will suggest some of these common elements in a few contemporary examples -- Sarah Hoyt’s Shakespearean Fantasies trilogy, Elizabeth Bear’s Promethean Age trilogy, Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’s Shakespeare chapters in the graphic novels series The Sandman, and a new voice, Greer Gilman, who features Shakespeare and Ben Jonson as investigators of supernatural recreants – and will discuss the critique such works provide of the popular cultural icon of Shakespeare as the progenitor of English literature.