- Departement d'anglais
Universite de Toulouse Jean Jaurès
5 allées Antonio Machado
F-31058 Toulouse CEDEX 9
FRANCE
- Literature, English Literature, Drama, Critical Discourse Studies, 17th Century & Early Modern Philosophy, Early Modern Literature, and 119 moreEarly Modern Europe, Early Modern Era, Early Modern England, English History, 17th-Century Studies, 16th Century (History), Early Modern Body, Early Modern Material Culture, Early Modern Science and Philosophy, 17th century english literature, 16th Century Dramatic Literature, 16th century english literature, Early Modern Scottish Literature, Paula Vogel, Early Modern History, English, Theatre Studies, Shakespeare, Early Modern English drama, Cultural Diplomacy, Renaissance drama, Dramaturgy, Performance Studies, History of the Theater, Diplomacy, Renaissance Studies, Cultural Materialism, Political Representation, Diplomatic History, Theatre History, Multilingualism, Diplomatic Studies, Early Modern theatre studies, Shakespearean Drama, Theatre, Seventeenth Century English Literature, Thomas Heywood, Diplomatie, Queen Elizabeth I, Diplomacy and international relations, Soft Power and Public Diplomacy, Translation Studies, Contemporary British Theatre, Adaptation, Contemporary Drama, Gogol, Sexuality, Feminist Philosophy, Jungian psychology, Gender, Sigmund Freud, Christopher Hampton, Thomas Middleton, Tom Stoppard, Theatre Translation, Traduction, Contemporary British Drama, Rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead, Drama and theatre studies, Stoppard, Edition Et Traduction Théâtrales, New Historicism, Literature and Visual Arts, Early Modern France, Quentin Skinner, Textual criticism (Classics), Ethos, William Shakespeare, King Henry V, Parrhesia, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, Ambassadors, Hotman Jean, John Webster, Duchess of Malfi, Early Modern Literature and Culture (Especially Drama)Theatre History, The Duchess of Malfi, Shakespearean performance history, English Renaissance Literature, Arras, curtains, thresholds in Art, The Winter's Tale, Literary Diplomacy, Miguel de Cervantes, Tapestry, Coriolanus, Arachne, Penelope from the Odyssey, Louis Marin, Characters, Abraham de Wicquefort, Theatre and Diplomacy, Politics and religion in Italy during in the Early Modern Age, Early Modern Trade, Pierre Corneille, German literature of the Middle ages and Early Modern Period, Shakespeare in Performance, Shakespeare adaptation, French Critical Theory, Public Diplomacy, cultural Cold War, public diplomacy, Genre studies, Elizabethan Literature, Jacobean theatre, Early Modern, Reviews, 20th Century, 19th Century Spain, 19th century France, History of Renaissance Science, Early modern art and science, French Enlightenment, performing arts, War, Gender Studies, Women's Studies, Performance, Materialism, Mythology, History and Classical tradition studies, and Soft Poweredit
- Associate Professor in Early Modern (Renaissance) Studiesedit
The idea for this issue originated in a diptych of conferences: Hamlet ... by the book?, organised by Nathalie Rivère de Carles for the Centre for Anglophone Studies (UR 801, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès) in December in 2022, and... more
The idea for this issue originated in a diptych of conferences: Hamlet ... by the book?, organised by Nathalie Rivère de Carles for the Centre for Anglophone Studies (UR 801, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès) in December in 2022, and Hamlet: The Play’s the Thing, convened by Sarah Hatchuel, Pierre Kapitaniak, and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin in Montpellier in February 2023 for the Institute for Research on the Renaissance, the Neo-classical Age, and the Enlightenment (IRCL–UMR 5186) and Laboratoire RiRRa21.
Though focusing on the different scenes of the play, the issue follows the tragic pattern from the opening conflict, to various complications, to resolution in death. Its nine articles are both close readings of specific passages of the play, and new takes on the play based on innovative and varied approaches. This ensemble reflects the density of William Shakespeare’s metaphors that each scene harbours in itself echoes of the play as a whole reinforced by the play’s self-reflectiveness articulated beyond the obvious metadramatic devices it contains.
Though focusing on the different scenes of the play, the issue follows the tragic pattern from the opening conflict, to various complications, to resolution in death. Its nine articles are both close readings of specific passages of the play, and new takes on the play based on innovative and varied approaches. This ensemble reflects the density of William Shakespeare’s metaphors that each scene harbours in itself echoes of the play as a whole reinforced by the play’s self-reflectiveness articulated beyond the obvious metadramatic devices it contains.
Research Interests:
Le concept de territoire a fait l’objet depuis les années 2010 d’un renouvellement théorique sous l’impulsion de Stuart Elden dans The Birth of Territory pour s’envisager en tant que mot, concept et pratique.Dans sa lecture... more
Le concept de territoire a fait l’objet depuis les années 2010 d’un renouvellement théorique sous l’impulsion de Stuart Elden dans The Birth of Territory pour s’envisager en tant que mot, concept et pratique.Dans sa lecture politico-géographique de l’œuvre de Shakespeare, Elden explique que « le territoire n’est pas un produit, mais un processus »(Shakespearean Territories 2). De même, la diplomatie n’est pas pur évènement mais processus. Comme le territoire, elle s’envisage dans un va-et-vient constant entre logos et praxis. Ce numéro propose donc d’étudier l’interaction entre territoire et diplomatie tant du point de vue du mot, que du concept et de la multiplicité des pratiques. Il s’agit de rouvrir la réflexion sur le concept de territoire en lien avec la diplomatie du monde anglophone aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, et en interaction avec lui, et d’en saisir à la fois les implications en contexte et les résurgences théoriques et pratiques ultérieures. L’approche choisie est celle de l’histoire diplomatique, politique, économique, sociale et culturelle, de la philosophie, du droit ainsi que de la nouvelle histoire diplomatique (Watkins ; Netzloff). À cette vision interdisciplinaire de la diplomatie, ce numéro ajoute celle d’une poétique diplomatique développée par Timothy Hampton dans Fictions of Embassy qui replace la fiction au centre des préoccupations diplomatiques de l’ère moderne. La fiction du territoire géographique et personnel de l’ambassadeur et des autres acteurs impliqués dans l’activité diplomatique met en perspective l’histoire politique tout autant qu’elle permet de la fabriquer. Ainsi, ce numéro propose une réflexion sur les territoires géographiques, impériaux, politiques et culturels de la diplomatie au prisme du concept de champ organisationnel et/ou stratégique théorisé par Pierre Bourdieu à partir de la littérature et étendu aux relations internationales par Rebecca Adler-Nissen. Il s’agit donc d’examiner en croisant les champs disciplinaires comment la diplomatie réévalue le champ au sens territorial et comment celui-ci participe d’une stratégie d’expansion, de défense, ou de discussion de la souveraineté. Alors que l’on s’apprête à célébrer les 400 ans de la parution du De iure belli ac pacis et Défense du chapitre V de Mare Liberum dans lesquels Hugo Grotius discute de la souveraineté et du territoire à partir des conflits et de leur gestion, et suggère d’envisager la diplomatie en termes de porosité et de processus, ce numéro s’inspire de la réflexion grotienne. Il remet au centre géopolitique les questions de souveraineté territoriale du point de vue du monde anglophone, et en relation avec lui (De Juris Belli ac Pacis ; The Free Sea 75-131)
Research Interests: American History, Diplomatic History, Political Philosophy, Early Modern History, Shakespeare, and 8 morePublic Diplomacy, British Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, Seventeenth and eighteenth-century women writers, women moral philosophers, Seventeenth-Century British History and Culture, Early American History, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, and Histoire des Amériques et de l'Afrique
I. Historicizing the Past, Emblematizing the Present Ignoring Crecy, Forgoing Poitiers and Adding to Agincourt: (For)getting the Battles Right in the Record Par John C. Ford Playing Dice at Agincourt: Games of Hazard and Providence in... more
I. Historicizing the Past, Emblematizing the Present
Ignoring Crecy, Forgoing Poitiers and Adding to Agincourt: (For)getting the Battles Right in the Record
Par John C. Ford
Playing Dice at Agincourt: Games of Hazard and Providence in Shakespeare’s Henry V
Par Louise Fang
The Motif of the Phoenix in Henry Peacham’s Minerva Britanna (1612), a Political Reappropriation
Par Cezara Bobeica
II. Renaissance Reconfigurations: A View to a Poetic Change
Thomas Pope Goodwine’s Most Pleasant History of Blanchadyne (1595): The Silent Revival of a Text by Caxton in the Late 16th Century
Par Cécile Decaix
Traduction et (re)naissance de la poésie anglaise à l’époque élisabéthaine
Par Laetitia Sansonetti
« The Last Elizabethan » : Ressusciter les morts avec Thomas Lovell Beddoes et T. S. Eliot
Par Kit Kumiko Toda
III. Shaping the Present, Imagining the Future: Stage Renaissance(s)
David Greig’s Dunsinane: the Renaissance of Tragedy?
Par Michèle Vignaux
Renaissance et discordance dans Brutopia d’Howard Barker : donner vie à l’irréel, brutaliser l’Utopia morienne
Par Louis André
Shakespeare, vecteur d’éducation et de théâtre populaires en Languedoc : l’aventure d’André Crocq, de l’Oflag IV D au Printemps des comédiens
Par Florence March
Ignoring Crecy, Forgoing Poitiers and Adding to Agincourt: (For)getting the Battles Right in the Record
Par John C. Ford
Playing Dice at Agincourt: Games of Hazard and Providence in Shakespeare’s Henry V
Par Louise Fang
The Motif of the Phoenix in Henry Peacham’s Minerva Britanna (1612), a Political Reappropriation
Par Cezara Bobeica
II. Renaissance Reconfigurations: A View to a Poetic Change
Thomas Pope Goodwine’s Most Pleasant History of Blanchadyne (1595): The Silent Revival of a Text by Caxton in the Late 16th Century
Par Cécile Decaix
Traduction et (re)naissance de la poésie anglaise à l’époque élisabéthaine
Par Laetitia Sansonetti
« The Last Elizabethan » : Ressusciter les morts avec Thomas Lovell Beddoes et T. S. Eliot
Par Kit Kumiko Toda
III. Shaping the Present, Imagining the Future: Stage Renaissance(s)
David Greig’s Dunsinane: the Renaissance of Tragedy?
Par Michèle Vignaux
Renaissance et discordance dans Brutopia d’Howard Barker : donner vie à l’irréel, brutaliser l’Utopia morienne
Par Louis André
Shakespeare, vecteur d’éducation et de théâtre populaires en Languedoc : l’aventure d’André Crocq, de l’Oflag IV D au Printemps des comédiens
Par Florence March
Research Interests:
Following the approach of New Diplomatic History and using the full spectrum of diplomatic literature, the ten articles deal with official and non-official forms of diplomacy. They broaden the perspective on early modern non-verbal... more
Following the approach of New Diplomatic History and using the
full spectrum of diplomatic literature, the ten articles deal with official
and non-official forms of diplomacy. They broaden the perspective on
early modern non-verbal diplomacy, the education and the practice of
ambassadors as well as the evolution of their identity. Pairing diplomatic
history with other disciplinary approaches and methodologies such as
political communication and science, strategic studies and semiotic and
literary analysis, they off er new perspectives on well-known diplomatic
events such as the escapade of the future Charles I and the Duke of
Buckingham to Spain in 1623 or Louis XIV’s diplomacy of munificence.
They also analyse never or seldom studied data such as the account
of the visit of Spanish merchants-turned-diplomats to Ottoman Algiers
in the 1560s, Ottoman accounts of the visit of foreign representatives at
the Porte between 1612 and 1643, and the colonial diplomacy of New
France in the 1660s. Thus, the ensemble sheds new strategic light on
a part of diplomatic activity often seen as merely ornamental.
full spectrum of diplomatic literature, the ten articles deal with official
and non-official forms of diplomacy. They broaden the perspective on
early modern non-verbal diplomacy, the education and the practice of
ambassadors as well as the evolution of their identity. Pairing diplomatic
history with other disciplinary approaches and methodologies such as
political communication and science, strategic studies and semiotic and
literary analysis, they off er new perspectives on well-known diplomatic
events such as the escapade of the future Charles I and the Duke of
Buckingham to Spain in 1623 or Louis XIV’s diplomacy of munificence.
They also analyse never or seldom studied data such as the account
of the visit of Spanish merchants-turned-diplomats to Ottoman Algiers
in the 1560s, Ottoman accounts of the visit of foreign representatives at
the Porte between 1612 and 1643, and the colonial diplomacy of New
France in the 1660s. Thus, the ensemble sheds new strategic light on
a part of diplomatic activity often seen as merely ornamental.
Research Interests:
This book explores the secret relations between theatre and diplomacy from the Tudors to the Treaty of Westphalia. It offers an original insight into the art of diplomacy in the 1580-1655 period through the prism of literature, theatre... more
This book explores the secret relations between theatre and diplomacy from the Tudors to the Treaty of Westphalia. It offers an original insight into the art of diplomacy in the 1580-1655 period through the prism of literature, theatre and material history.
Contributors investigate English, Italian and German plays of Renaissance theoretical texts on diplomacy, lifting the veil on the intimate relations between ambassadors and the artistic world and on theatre as an unexpected instrument of 'soft power'. The volume offers new approaches to understanding Early Modern diplomacy, which was a source of inspiration for Renaissance drama for Shakespeare and his European contemporaries, and contributed to fashion the aesthetic and the political ideas and practice of the Renaissance.
This book examines work from well-known English EM dramatists (Jonson, Shakespeare) in addition to their lesser-known continental counterparts. It has an international, cross-cultural focus that mirrors increasing interest in work outside the traditional Anglo-centric ‘canon’. It features a strong, international array of up-and-coming and established scholars.
Contributors investigate English, Italian and German plays of Renaissance theoretical texts on diplomacy, lifting the veil on the intimate relations between ambassadors and the artistic world and on theatre as an unexpected instrument of 'soft power'. The volume offers new approaches to understanding Early Modern diplomacy, which was a source of inspiration for Renaissance drama for Shakespeare and his European contemporaries, and contributed to fashion the aesthetic and the political ideas and practice of the Renaissance.
This book examines work from well-known English EM dramatists (Jonson, Shakespeare) in addition to their lesser-known continental counterparts. It has an international, cross-cultural focus that mirrors increasing interest in work outside the traditional Anglo-centric ‘canon’. It features a strong, international array of up-and-coming and established scholars.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The “Rhetoric of Violence in Early Modern Europe” took this issue of the Cahiers Shakespeare en devenir in two new directions. The editors have chosen to take English Renaissance drama and the study of dramatic practices in the wider... more
The “Rhetoric of Violence in Early Modern Europe” took this issue of the Cahiers Shakespeare en devenir in two new directions. The editors have chosen to take English Renaissance drama and the study of dramatic practices in the wider early modern European socio-political context. Studying the practice and the aim of violence in Shakespeare and his contemporaries’ theatre entailed a prior exploration of violence as part and parcel of early modern politics and aesthetics. The entertaining value of violence needed to be appraised with a Machiavellian political subjective objectivity.
When Machiavelli offers a realistic definition of the use of force in The Prince, he puts violence into a triple context:
“Thus you must know that there are two kinds of combat: one with laws, the other with force. The first is proper to man, the second to beasts; but because the first is often not enough, one must have recourse to the second.”
The choice of an iconoclastic breach of degrees in putting man on the same level as beasts suggests the symbolic value of violence in the early modern psyche. This symbolism becomes a method of discovery of the didactic value of force or violence and suggests that force itself is to be read as the basis of a political epistemology relying on aesthetic expressions of violence.
The goal of this volume was thus to explore the rhetoric of violence in its symbolic, epistemological and political uses in the wider European context that informed, echoed and nourished Shakespeare and his contemporaries in their dramatic appraisals of early modern use of violence. Looking across the Channel, we decided to explore violence through the prism of the relationship between England and the continent. This investigation moved logically from the historical facts to their political use and impact and their philosophical underpinning before giving a symbolic interpretation of violence. The volume was then structured into three related parts: the political and historical accounts of an epistemology of violence, violence as an aesthetic and a scientific means to reflect on the relationship between the state and the self, and the perception of both aspects in early modern popular culture through widely disseminated forms of entertainment, tale-telling and theatre.
When Machiavelli offers a realistic definition of the use of force in The Prince, he puts violence into a triple context:
“Thus you must know that there are two kinds of combat: one with laws, the other with force. The first is proper to man, the second to beasts; but because the first is often not enough, one must have recourse to the second.”
The choice of an iconoclastic breach of degrees in putting man on the same level as beasts suggests the symbolic value of violence in the early modern psyche. This symbolism becomes a method of discovery of the didactic value of force or violence and suggests that force itself is to be read as the basis of a political epistemology relying on aesthetic expressions of violence.
The goal of this volume was thus to explore the rhetoric of violence in its symbolic, epistemological and political uses in the wider European context that informed, echoed and nourished Shakespeare and his contemporaries in their dramatic appraisals of early modern use of violence. Looking across the Channel, we decided to explore violence through the prism of the relationship between England and the continent. This investigation moved logically from the historical facts to their political use and impact and their philosophical underpinning before giving a symbolic interpretation of violence. The volume was then structured into three related parts: the political and historical accounts of an epistemology of violence, violence as an aesthetic and a scientific means to reflect on the relationship between the state and the self, and the perception of both aspects in early modern popular culture through widely disseminated forms of entertainment, tale-telling and theatre.
Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Gender Studies, Early Modern History, New Historicism, Genre studies, and 15 moreRenaissance Studies, Gender and Sexuality, Phenomenology, Early Modern Europe, Pedagogy, Cultural Materialism, Early Modern Literature, Literature and Visual Arts, Curriculum Development, Early Modern English drama, Early Modern France, Visual Arts, New Economic Criticism, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, and History of the Theater
Beckett studies have been enriched by a variety of criticism that relies on theoretical constructs or introduces abstract concepts to clarify its objects, explain their construction or validate interpretative hypotheses concerning their... more
Beckett studies have been enriched by a variety of criticism that relies on theoretical constructs or introduces abstract concepts to clarify its objects, explain their construction or validate interpretative hypotheses concerning their significance.
The purpose of this collection of articles is not to offer an exhaustive panorama or a radical assessment of such philosophical approaches, which, broadly speaking, also include all forms of universals that might be recognized in Beckett's plays, be they archetypal or psychoanalytical (psychoanalysis being understood as a form of applied philosophy of the mind or of the subject). Nonetheless, the reader will remark that most of the contributors to this collection either resort to a particular branch of philosophy to push forward their enquiry into Beckett’s oeuvre, or react to them in an attempt to define a singularity of the stage and valorize the physicality of the dramatic experience. That is why the examinations of Beckett's work contained in this particular issue of Miranda range between the two poles of theatricality and conceptualization. The material and scenographic presence of the actors’ bodies and the staged objects, as well as the tangible character of the voices, belong to the former, while the ideas that might possibly reveal or obscure the originality or otherness of Beckett'stheater stand at the other extremity of the critical spectrum.
The purpose of this collection of articles is not to offer an exhaustive panorama or a radical assessment of such philosophical approaches, which, broadly speaking, also include all forms of universals that might be recognized in Beckett's plays, be they archetypal or psychoanalytical (psychoanalysis being understood as a form of applied philosophy of the mind or of the subject). Nonetheless, the reader will remark that most of the contributors to this collection either resort to a particular branch of philosophy to push forward their enquiry into Beckett’s oeuvre, or react to them in an attempt to define a singularity of the stage and valorize the physicality of the dramatic experience. That is why the examinations of Beckett's work contained in this particular issue of Miranda range between the two poles of theatricality and conceptualization. The material and scenographic presence of the actors’ bodies and the staged objects, as well as the tangible character of the voices, belong to the former, while the ideas that might possibly reveal or obscure the originality or otherness of Beckett'stheater stand at the other extremity of the critical spectrum.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Psychoanalysis, Ethics, Theatre Studies, Feminist Theory, Marxism, and 12 moreFeminist Philosophy, Sexuality, Jungian psychology, Gender, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, Social and Political Philosophy, Solidarity Economy, Theories of Socialism, Christopher Hampton, Antiglobalization Social Movements, and Latin American feminisms
Contrairement aux pièces historiques, Hamlet ne s’ouvre pas sur une scène de réception diplomatique, mais d’instruction aux ambassadeurs. L’accent est donc mis sur la nature et l’impact de l’action diplomatique, et suggère un changement... more
Contrairement aux pièces historiques, Hamlet ne s’ouvre pas sur une scène de réception diplomatique, mais d’instruction aux ambassadeurs. L’accent est donc mis sur la nature et l’impact de l’action diplomatique, et suggère un changement dans la relation entre diplomatie et tragédie : il ne s’agit pas seulement de nourrir l’âgon, mais d’y trouver une solution. De plus, l’insertion de la diplomatie dans le genre tragique en souligne la mutation à l’époque de Shakespeare : le dénouement ne dépend plus d’une intervention divine ou d’un deus-ex-machina héroïque, mais d’agents humains identifiés par leur nom et impliqués dans la vie publique. C’est une tragédie de la vengeance qui se veut plus réaliste que permet le trope diplomatique.
Dans Fiction of Embassy, Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (2009), Timothy Hampton analyse l’articulation entre diplomatie, construction de l’État et tragédie de la vengeance dans Hamlet et souligne la fonction instrumentale de la diplomatie dans un cadre domestique. Andràs Kiséry, quant à lui, montre dans Hamlet’s Moment: Drama and Political Knowledge (2016) le lien de la pièce avec l’environnement diplomatique et la circulation de l’information au début du XVIIe siècle. En replaçant la pièce de Shakespeare dans son contexte diplomatique théorique et pratique, ce chapitre propose ainsi d’étudier un aspect laissé de côté dans ces deux études : la pièce comme miroir critique d’une diplomatie moderne confrontée aux poussées tyranniques dont l’expression nourrit et se nourrit d’une réforme de la tragédie de la vengeance. La canalisation de la violence par la diplomatie dans la pièce ajoute aux débats traditionnels de la tragédie de la vengeance, celui sur la bonne gouvernance sur les plans local et international. Hamlet montre comment les impulsions tyranniques limitent l’art de la négociation. Elle souligne en particulier le danger du traitement de l’ambassadeur comme simple lettre vivante au lieu d’en solliciter l’analyse et, à son tour, de la prolonger. Hamlet semble reproduire cette critique en la mettant clairement au centre de l’action tragique dont elle constitue en partie l’hamartia de l’antagoniste. Dans L’Ambassadeur, traité de diplomatie publié en 1603 en français puis six mois plus tard en anglais, Jean Hotman, dans la lignée de Machiavel, parle du « sage ambassadeur donnant autre conseil et adresse » (1603). Hamlet montre que la surdité et l’aveuglement des princes quant au contenu d’une dépêche ou d’une relation allant dans le sens de leur plaisir (comme lors de l’ambassade norvégienne) est une limite à la ruse diplomatique de Claudius.
La critique diplomatique et politique occasionnée par l’intégration de l’ambassade dans l’action de vengeance nous conduira enfin à réévaluer la nouvelle diplomatie pratiquée par Claudius. Les analyses récentes de la diplomatie de Claudius se concentrent sur le miroir d’une nouvelle diplomatie contribuant à la formation de l’État . Elles semblent toutefois ignorer la tyrannie d’usurpation de Claudius et le contexte monarchomaque dans lequel Shakespeare écrit la pièce. Si la diplomatie claudienne représente une nouvelle diplomatie au service de l’État, il faut aussi considérer la manipulation du concept de reconnaissance de souveraineté mis au service de l’hubris tyrannique de l’usurpateur.
Dans Fiction of Embassy, Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (2009), Timothy Hampton analyse l’articulation entre diplomatie, construction de l’État et tragédie de la vengeance dans Hamlet et souligne la fonction instrumentale de la diplomatie dans un cadre domestique. Andràs Kiséry, quant à lui, montre dans Hamlet’s Moment: Drama and Political Knowledge (2016) le lien de la pièce avec l’environnement diplomatique et la circulation de l’information au début du XVIIe siècle. En replaçant la pièce de Shakespeare dans son contexte diplomatique théorique et pratique, ce chapitre propose ainsi d’étudier un aspect laissé de côté dans ces deux études : la pièce comme miroir critique d’une diplomatie moderne confrontée aux poussées tyranniques dont l’expression nourrit et se nourrit d’une réforme de la tragédie de la vengeance. La canalisation de la violence par la diplomatie dans la pièce ajoute aux débats traditionnels de la tragédie de la vengeance, celui sur la bonne gouvernance sur les plans local et international. Hamlet montre comment les impulsions tyranniques limitent l’art de la négociation. Elle souligne en particulier le danger du traitement de l’ambassadeur comme simple lettre vivante au lieu d’en solliciter l’analyse et, à son tour, de la prolonger. Hamlet semble reproduire cette critique en la mettant clairement au centre de l’action tragique dont elle constitue en partie l’hamartia de l’antagoniste. Dans L’Ambassadeur, traité de diplomatie publié en 1603 en français puis six mois plus tard en anglais, Jean Hotman, dans la lignée de Machiavel, parle du « sage ambassadeur donnant autre conseil et adresse » (1603). Hamlet montre que la surdité et l’aveuglement des princes quant au contenu d’une dépêche ou d’une relation allant dans le sens de leur plaisir (comme lors de l’ambassade norvégienne) est une limite à la ruse diplomatique de Claudius.
La critique diplomatique et politique occasionnée par l’intégration de l’ambassade dans l’action de vengeance nous conduira enfin à réévaluer la nouvelle diplomatie pratiquée par Claudius. Les analyses récentes de la diplomatie de Claudius se concentrent sur le miroir d’une nouvelle diplomatie contribuant à la formation de l’État . Elles semblent toutefois ignorer la tyrannie d’usurpation de Claudius et le contexte monarchomaque dans lequel Shakespeare écrit la pièce. Si la diplomatie claudienne représente une nouvelle diplomatie au service de l’État, il faut aussi considérer la manipulation du concept de reconnaissance de souveraineté mis au service de l’hubris tyrannique de l’usurpateur.
Research Interests:
In 1627, an alleged murder plot involving a dagger targeted Georges Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham during his expedition to the Isle of Ré. In 1628, John Felton, a veteran of that same expedition, killed Buckingham with a dagger. This... more
In 1627, an alleged murder plot involving a dagger targeted Georges Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham during his expedition to the Isle of Ré. In 1628, John Felton, a veteran of that same expedition, killed Buckingham with a dagger. This article examines the failure of Buckingham's branding strategy based on the transformation of real weapons into fictional items. It considers three of Buckingham's political self-fashioning objects: his armour in the Mytens portrait, a dagger and a coranto of news. These are contrasted with their reception in Thomas Heywood's tragicomedy The Royal King and the Loyal Subject, diplomatic relations, and libels.
Research Interests: English Literature, Early Modern History, Political communication, Political Assassinations, Sir Philip Sidney, and 10 morePolitical propaganda and Literature, Thomas Heywood, Materiality, Arms and Armour, Charles I, Ancient Weapons and Warfare, Henri IV, Huguenots in La Rochelle, George Villiers Duke of Buckingham, and Early Modern English Literature and Drama
The article first shows how early modern English theatre gives a literary agency to truce by making it a functional part of the play’s rhythm. Truce reconfigures the âgon away from its conventional outlook. From this panoramic study... more
The article first shows how early modern English theatre gives a literary agency to truce by making it a functional part of the play’s rhythm. Truce reconfigures the âgon away from its conventional outlook. From this panoramic study emerges two different visions of truce, ‘base’ and ‘happy’ truce dramatised in Henry V. The latter stages both a zero-sum-gain negotiation in Act 3 Scene 3(one player’s gain is predicated on the other players’ loss) and the possibility of a non-zero-sum agreement (one player’s gain [or loss]doesnotnecessarily result in the other players’ loss [or gain]) in Act 2 Scene 1. In Henry Vand The Winter’s Tale, truce-making is left to secondary characters, but it is the tragicomedy with its play-long expansion of the time and territory of truce that really tests a method to implement a successful ‘happy’ truce through a time-lapsing diplomacy. In addition, the playoffers another method: theatre and wonder. Thus, lastly the article posits that artistic performance gives further agency to this newly-created dramatic truce through the redefinition of the characters’ and the audience’s relationship with the past in both the final scene of The Winter’s Taleand some contemporary performances of Henry V. The article concludes that truce as an operating framework and as the strategy for a performance of history shows that the Shakespearean play offers a practical articulation of ideal and non-ideal viewsof peace-making, the responsibility of which lies with the audience.
Research Interests:
https://journals.shu.ac.uk/index.php/EMLS/issue/view/20 On his deathbed, Giacomo Attendolo Sforza reputedly told his son Francesco: 'If you have three enemies: make peace with the first, broker a truce with the second, and attack and... more
https://journals.shu.ac.uk/index.php/EMLS/issue/view/20
On his deathbed, Giacomo Attendolo Sforza reputedly told his son Francesco: 'If you have three enemies: make peace with the first, broker a truce with the second, and attack and destroy the third'. Often ignored due to that betweenness illustrated by Sforza's rhetoric, truce is an essential feature of the conduct of military and political affairs. Relying on examples taken from Plutarch, Cicero, Livy, and recent history, early modern political thinkers referred to or investigated truce, its legal shape, political and even ethical ramifications. The early modern discussion differs from The Peace and Truce of God movement as it does not officially issue socially structuring measures. The movement that lasted between the tenth and thirteenth centuries and officially aimed to limit the use of violence, protect the defenceless and curtail the development of private wars. 2 The religious aspect, as seen in this collection of essays (Mathieu, Reid, Lafont), remained an important part of early modern truces. Yet the discussions were increasingly secularised. As shown in several articles (Daniel, Rivere de Carles, Gonzalez and Hampton), the literature of and about truce flourished in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but it was more...
On his deathbed, Giacomo Attendolo Sforza reputedly told his son Francesco: 'If you have three enemies: make peace with the first, broker a truce with the second, and attack and destroy the third'. Often ignored due to that betweenness illustrated by Sforza's rhetoric, truce is an essential feature of the conduct of military and political affairs. Relying on examples taken from Plutarch, Cicero, Livy, and recent history, early modern political thinkers referred to or investigated truce, its legal shape, political and even ethical ramifications. The early modern discussion differs from The Peace and Truce of God movement as it does not officially issue socially structuring measures. The movement that lasted between the tenth and thirteenth centuries and officially aimed to limit the use of violence, protect the defenceless and curtail the development of private wars. 2 The religious aspect, as seen in this collection of essays (Mathieu, Reid, Lafont), remained an important part of early modern truces. Yet the discussions were increasingly secularised. As shown in several articles (Daniel, Rivere de Carles, Gonzalez and Hampton), the literature of and about truce flourished in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but it was more...
Research Interests: Early Modern History, International Law, Renaissance Studies, Shakespeare, Drama, and 13 moreEarly Modern Europe, Early Modern Women Writers, Early Modern Spanish literature, History of Diplomacy, Early Modern Philosophy, Lope de Vega, Hugo Grotius, King Henry V, William Caxton, Du Bellay, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, Truce Conflicts (1609-21), and Emperador Carlos V
From the outset, Hamlet's "inky cloak" and "customary suits of solemn black" (1.2.77-78) can signal to the audience that is story is part of tragic "suits", a point this chapter demonstrates in an analysis that bridges the linguistic and... more
From the outset, Hamlet's "inky cloak" and "customary suits of solemn black" (1.2.77-78) can signal to the audience that is story is part of tragic "suits", a point this chapter demonstrates in an analysis that bridges the linguistic and material conditions of the stage in its exploration of the textile dimensions of Hamlet.
Byt combining theatre history, textual and performance analysis, this chapter argues that textiles in Hamlet guarantee the transformation of the character's self, and the play's genre and performance, by generating a functioning dialogue between the theatrical and the literary. To show that textiles partake of Hamlet's transformative metadrama and metatheatre, this chapter begins by examining how they shape the play's stage-design, genre, setting and plot structure. Then it focuses on the way the costumes and the stage arras refashion the characters and contribute to the play's dramatic method of self-knowledge. The surrogative power of textiles finally leads us to consider how revenge tragedy is modified by textile replications of the revenger and of the play-within-the-play.
Byt combining theatre history, textual and performance analysis, this chapter argues that textiles in Hamlet guarantee the transformation of the character's self, and the play's genre and performance, by generating a functioning dialogue between the theatrical and the literary. To show that textiles partake of Hamlet's transformative metadrama and metatheatre, this chapter begins by examining how they shape the play's stage-design, genre, setting and plot structure. Then it focuses on the way the costumes and the stage arras refashion the characters and contribute to the play's dramatic method of self-knowledge. The surrogative power of textiles finally leads us to consider how revenge tragedy is modified by textile replications of the revenger and of the play-within-the-play.
Research Interests: Shakespeare, Renaissance literature, Revenge Tragedy, Textile Technology, Hamlet, and 6 moreShakespeare in Performance, Stage Properties, Theatre & Performance Costumes, Early Modern Literature and Culture (Especially Drama)Theatre History, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, and theater curtains
Contrasting Thomas Heywood’s diplomatic scenes in If you know not me, you know no bodie or The Troubles of the Queene Elizabeth (1605), with Francis Thynne’s The Perfect Ambassadour (1578) and Jean Hotman’s The Ambassador (1603), this... more
Contrasting Thomas Heywood’s diplomatic scenes in If you know not me, you know no bodie or The Troubles of the Queene Elizabeth (1605), with Francis Thynne’s The Perfect Ambassadour (1578) and Jean Hotman’s The Ambassador (1603), this study considers, with Peter Burke, language culture ‘in terms of linguistic, cultural, and social conflicts as well as of collective solidarities and identities’. It approaches languages in terms of communities as loci of construction and reconstruction of national and territorial identities. Observing Heywood’s Latin-based diplomatic multilingualism, this article examines the process of delocalizing one’s language into a linguistic other and its physical re-localizing on the stage. It probes how diplomatic multilingualism reflects the difficult construction of the English self at the turn of the seventeenth century in terms of absorptiveness and defiance. It analyses how it dramatises the English ambivalence regarding the concepts of community and commonwealth. The first section examines the use of foreign languages in early modern English diplomacy and posits that, after Thynne’s reflection on diplomatic multilingualism, Elizabeth’s Latin should be construed as an object of a proto soft power. Heywood’s transfer of Elizabeth’s diplomatic multilingualism on the stage partakes of a cultural strategy. Thus the article shows how Heywood paradoxically recreates diplomatic otherness as local language. Lastly, it assesses the concord provided by Elizabeth’s stage multilingualism as coercive and potentially inefficient if not handled with measure.
Research Interests: Diplomatic History, English Literature, Theatre History, Multilingualism, Diplomatic Studies, and 11 moreEarly Modern Europe, Renaissance drama, Shakespearean Drama, Early Modern theatre studies, Theatre, Seventeenth Century English Literature, Thomas Heywood, Diplomatie, Queen Elizabeth I, Diplomacy and international relations, and Soft Power and Public Diplomacy
Despite the tropic image of the ambassador as a human letter, studies on diplomacy often focus on the ambassadors’ words rather than their objects or their actual bodies. Symbolically, an ambassador was off ered as an object for the... more
Despite the tropic image of the ambassador as a human letter, studies
on diplomacy often focus on the ambassadors’ words rather than their
objects or their actual bodies. Symbolically, an ambassador was off ered
as an object for the foreign master to read, observe and manipulate in
space as well as to listen to. Th e ambassador’s body as a language and
the use of objects to produce a diplomatic language may then prove
more eloquent than what the diplomatic agents said. Mirella Marini
highlights the specifi c symbolic language ambassadors had to use: ‘Th e
aristocratic diplomats were not necessarily there to draft the papers.
Th e professionals handled the legal work, but the courtiers were there
to use a specifi c “court language”.’1
Th is ‘specifi c court language’ was
not only verbal, but physical and material, and it was not limited to the
confi nes of the court. Conversely, this non-verbal language was not only
produced by the court but penetrates the latter from other economic,
social or religious circles. Th is issue’s contributions aim to bridge the
gap between seminal works produced on the material economy of
diplomacy such as Emissaries in Early Modern Literature and Culture and the actual semiotic language implied by moving bodies in a diplomatic context. They confront the expectations regarding the material and physical language of diplomacy with practical examples unveiling the impact of diplomatic body and material languages.
on diplomacy often focus on the ambassadors’ words rather than their
objects or their actual bodies. Symbolically, an ambassador was off ered
as an object for the foreign master to read, observe and manipulate in
space as well as to listen to. Th e ambassador’s body as a language and
the use of objects to produce a diplomatic language may then prove
more eloquent than what the diplomatic agents said. Mirella Marini
highlights the specifi c symbolic language ambassadors had to use: ‘Th e
aristocratic diplomats were not necessarily there to draft the papers.
Th e professionals handled the legal work, but the courtiers were there
to use a specifi c “court language”.’1
Th is ‘specifi c court language’ was
not only verbal, but physical and material, and it was not limited to the
confi nes of the court. Conversely, this non-verbal language was not only
produced by the court but penetrates the latter from other economic,
social or religious circles. Th is issue’s contributions aim to bridge the
gap between seminal works produced on the material economy of
diplomacy such as Emissaries in Early Modern Literature and Culture and the actual semiotic language implied by moving bodies in a diplomatic context. They confront the expectations regarding the material and physical language of diplomacy with practical examples unveiling the impact of diplomatic body and material languages.
Research Interests:
Sir Henry Wotton’s definition of an ambassador as “an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country” should be confronted with his later assessment that the ambassador “should alwayes, and upon all occasions speak the truth …... more
Sir Henry Wotton’s definition of an ambassador as “an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country” should be confronted with his later assessment that the ambassador “should alwayes, and upon all occasions speak the truth … ’twill also put [his] Adversaries (who will still hunt counter) to a loss in all their disquisitions, and undertakings.” Wotton’s contrasting views point to the early modern concern with true, bold, and plain speech, known as parrhesia, and its importance in diplomatic practice. Combining Quentin Skinner’s rhetorical approach to political language and Timothy Hampton’s literary analysis of diplomacy, this essay examines Shakespeare’s mirror of diplomatic speech featured in Henry V (ca. 1599) in light of Jean Hotman’s reflections on parrhesia in The Ambassador (1603). Analyzing theoretical and dramatic views of parrhesiastic speech in early modern diplomacy, the essay argues for diplomatic parrhesia as a matter of trustworthiness rather than sincerity. Shakespeare introduces a new perspective on the ambassador’s speech and its function and on the capacity of authorities to hear truthful speech, while reasserting the political necessity of good parrhesia.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Considering the early modern arras as a third place means considering the full experience of theatre: its dramaturgy, poetics and reflexivity. It enables us to envisage an object in terms of both its material and poetic existence on the... more
Considering the early modern arras as a third place means considering the full experience of theatre: its dramaturgy, poetics and reflexivity. It enables us to envisage an object in terms of both its material and poetic existence on the stage and on the page. This agency is deployed on the stage and page through Webster’s use of the extended metaphor of fabric in The Duchess of Malfi. This chapter analyses the role of fabrics in the play’s performance and development as the basis of Webster’s dramaturgical reinvention of revenge tragedy into a genre that might not be that interested in revenge. To discuss how Webster revisits revenge tragedy through a material prism requires observing first how Webster lures the spectator into a deceptive spectacle of intimacy redolent of conventional comedy. The tragic manipulation of the comic topos of love thanks to the arras leads us to consider it less as a dramaturgical instrument than as a mode of writing. Webster relies on the arras and its avatars to create a paroxysmal dramaturgy of cruelty successfully fusing the conventional and the realistic to switch the focus from revenge to injustice.
Research Interests:
Ce chapitre se penche sur deux pièces possédant un arrière-plan diplomatique véritable. Il s’agit donc d’observer le cadre diplomatique réaliste et les ambassadrices imaginaires d’une diplomatie conjugale dans la comédie hybride de... more
Ce chapitre se penche sur deux pièces possédant un arrière-plan diplomatique véritable. Il s’agit donc d’observer le cadre diplomatique réaliste et les ambassadrices imaginaires d’une diplomatie conjugale dans la comédie hybride de Cervantès intitulée La Grande sultane Catalina de Oviedo et la tragicomédie de William Shakespeare, Le Conte d’hiver. Le but en sera de voir comment la modification des personnages dramatiques féminins par le trope diplomatique permet une réflexion le gouvernement et sur la parole diplomatique.
Research Interests:
The myths of Penelope and Arachne connect the three ‘lives’ Aristotle defines as the components of the human quest for happiness: sensual enjoyment, political achievement and intellectual contemplation. Arachne’s sensuous tapestry and... more
The myths of Penelope and Arachne connect the three ‘lives’ Aristotle defines as the components of the human quest for happiness: sensual enjoyment, political achievement and intellectual contemplation. Arachne’s sensuous tapestry and Penelope’s erotic delaying and performance of uxorial love are essential components of their mythical lives. However, the myths do not solely relate to sexual virtue. Their woven works merge the physical and the intellectual, and reveal an agency transcending their often limited gendered representations. They are the instruments of a bold discussion ranging from the preservation to the reform of political and civic virtue. Glenda McLeod notes that the epideictic rhetoric used to portray the mulier clara in mythographies ‘had long been associated with civic virtue [and] anticipates future links between the good woman and the good state’. The weaver’s political character favours the reassessment of the moralised tales of feminine virtue. This chapter intends to show how Penelope and Arachne resisted a limiting mythographical moralisation through a successful association of gender, political agency and intellectual observation on the stage. It focuses on the re- emergence of the weavers’ political function and work in Jacobean drama.
To analyse the part played by the mythological weavers in early modern drama is to measure what Tania Demetriou calls their ‘balancing act’. This chapter shows how theatre enables the mythical weavers to retrieve their agency thanks to female characterisation. It projects the concept of a ‘balancing act’ out of the strictly domestic sphere by confronting Penelope with her ‘bolder face’, Arachne, and thereby demonstrates how Arachne’s bold questioning and Penelope’s balancing eff ort merge in a reformative dynamics that aims to reach a political mean . In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle posits the theory of the μεσότης (the mean), or ‘middling disposition’ and explains that it is not an arithmetical absolute ‘between too much and too little, or between greater and lesser intensity, but rather what is moderate in the sense of correct’.
The mean is not what is, but what should be: its applicability relies on a rhetoric of measure that includes balancing actions. In literature, it is conveyed by mediating characters whose virtue lies between excess and deficiency and by the playwrights’ balancing approach to genres. Nonetheless, the characters representing the mean on the early modern stage present an altered vision of the Aristotelian theory. The Penelopean and Arachnean doctrine of the mean implies reinjecting excess and deficiency into the equation of the mean in order to solve it. (...) Thus, analysing the internal interweavings of the Penelopean myth in John Fletcher, Nathan Field and Philip Massinger’s The Honest Man’s Fortune and William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus , I will stress how the weaver questions domestic hierarchy. Furthering this critique of male hubris, I will show that early modern plays offer a second, even more political, form of interweaving of the weavers’ myths: the external interweaving of the Penelope and Arachne myths in The Winter’s Tale . This last play exemplifies how the weaver moves from reflector to political agent and shapes a new operational feminine character.
To analyse the part played by the mythological weavers in early modern drama is to measure what Tania Demetriou calls their ‘balancing act’. This chapter shows how theatre enables the mythical weavers to retrieve their agency thanks to female characterisation. It projects the concept of a ‘balancing act’ out of the strictly domestic sphere by confronting Penelope with her ‘bolder face’, Arachne, and thereby demonstrates how Arachne’s bold questioning and Penelope’s balancing eff ort merge in a reformative dynamics that aims to reach a political mean . In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle posits the theory of the μεσότης (the mean), or ‘middling disposition’ and explains that it is not an arithmetical absolute ‘between too much and too little, or between greater and lesser intensity, but rather what is moderate in the sense of correct’.
The mean is not what is, but what should be: its applicability relies on a rhetoric of measure that includes balancing actions. In literature, it is conveyed by mediating characters whose virtue lies between excess and deficiency and by the playwrights’ balancing approach to genres. Nonetheless, the characters representing the mean on the early modern stage present an altered vision of the Aristotelian theory. The Penelopean and Arachnean doctrine of the mean implies reinjecting excess and deficiency into the equation of the mean in order to solve it. (...) Thus, analysing the internal interweavings of the Penelopean myth in John Fletcher, Nathan Field and Philip Massinger’s The Honest Man’s Fortune and William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus , I will stress how the weaver questions domestic hierarchy. Furthering this critique of male hubris, I will show that early modern plays offer a second, even more political, form of interweaving of the weavers’ myths: the external interweaving of the Penelope and Arachne myths in The Winter’s Tale . This last play exemplifies how the weaver moves from reflector to political agent and shapes a new operational feminine character.
Research Interests:
The Embassador … ought to have a tincture of the comedian, (…), there is not a more comical personage than the Embassador.’ In Wicquefort’s definition, the ambassador is not identified solely as an actor but, more interestingly, as a... more
The Embassador … ought to have a tincture of the comedian, (…), there is not a more comical personage than the Embassador.’ In Wicquefort’s definition, the ambassador is not identified solely as an actor but, more interestingly, as a character, as a rhetorical and a structural locus for an idea, namely appeasement. At first, he seems to be reduced to an actor, but the word ‘comedian’ means more than performance. It refers to the genre of comedy and its action: the ambassador as character helps to resolve the initial comic conflict and to favour the return to peace through a symbolic event. Focusing on two Jacobean plays, Ben Jonson’s political tragedy Catiline and William Shakespeare’s tragicomedy Measure for Measure, the chapter deals with the gradual transformation of ambassadorial characters from a passive to an active Catastrophe, the creation of a new type of character, the diplomatic character, and how the latter plays a part in the appeasement of dramatic conflicts. Finally, we analyse how diplomatic indirect characterization, especially in a tragicomic context, is an oblique strategy of appeasement (the diplomatic coup d’état) and a subtle discussion of both the principal’s hubris and the ambassador’s ill counsel.
Research Interests:
The portrait of Queen Elizabeth receiving Dutch ambassadors in 1585 illustrates both the complex form and content of early modern diplomacy and its conception of peace. The ambassadors had come to negotiate England’s help against Spanish... more
The portrait of Queen Elizabeth receiving Dutch ambassadors in 1585 illustrates both the complex form and content of early modern diplomacy and its conception of peace. The ambassadors had come to negotiate England’s help against Spanish rule in the Netherlands. Elizabeth was offered election as countess of Holland and was thus faced with the possibility of an open diplomatic and military conflict with Spain. Although Elizabeth did not altogether dismiss the Dutch embassy, she opted for a peace mediation with Spain instead.2 As John Watkins and Carole Levin explain, Elizabeth was still influenced by ‘an older diplomatic model, in which all Europeans were imagined to be capable of working toward peace in common hope of salvation.’3 Such commitment to European peace is illustrated by Elizabeth opting for the ‘Burgundian solution’ which guaranteed Spanish rule over the Netherlands, minus Spain’s military presence there, while preserving Dutch traditional liberties and, more particularly, liberty of conscience.4 The painting and the decades of diplomatic negotiations that it illustrates testify to the Elizabethan attempt at preserving the consensus christianus, a pursuit prolonged in the Jacobean policy of appeasement. Monarchs, ambassadors, diplomatic figures of all creeds and nationalities struggled with fostering, or simply maintaining, peace. However, the opening years of the seventeenth century were faced with a daunting, and sadly familiar, threat: the rejection of the European consensus.
Research Interests: Early Modern Europe, Shakespearean Drama, Miguel de Cervantes, Persian Culture, History of Silesia, and 6 moreWilliam Shakespeare, German literature of the Middle ages and Early Modern Period, Politics and religion in Italy during in the Early Modern Age, Early Modern Trade, Pierre Corneille, and Early Modern English Literature and Drama
The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Tragedy is a collection of fifty-four essays by a range of scholars from all parts of the world, bringing together some of the best-known writers in the field with a strong selection of younger... more
The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Tragedy is a collection of fifty-four essays by a range of scholars from all parts of the world, bringing together some of the best-known writers in the field with a strong selection of younger Shakespeareans. Together these essays offer readers a fresh and comprehensive understanding of Shakespeare tragedies as both works of literature and as performance texts written by a playwright who was himself an experienced actor. The collection is organised in five sections. The substantial opening section introduces the plays by placing them in a variety of illuminating contexts: as well looking at ways in which later generations of critics have shaped our idea of 'Shakespearean' tragedy, it addresses questions of genre by examining the playwright's inheritance from the classical and medieval past, by considering tragedy's relationship to other genres (including history plays, tragicomedy, and satiric drama), and by showing how Shakespeare's tragedies respond to the pressures of early modern politics, religion, and ideas about humanity and the natural world. The second section is devoted to current textual issues; while the third offers new critical readings of each of the tragedies, from Titus Andronicus to Coriolanus. This is set beside a group of essays that deal with performance history, with screen productions, and with versions devised for the operatic stage, as well as with the extraordinary diversity of twentieth and twenty-first century re-workings of Shakespearean tragedy. The thirteen essays of the book's final section seek to expand readers' awareness of Shakespeare's global reach, tracing histories of criticism and performance across Europe, the Americas, Australasia, the Middle East, Africa, India, and East Asia. Offering the richest and most diverse collection of approaches to Shakespearean tragedy currently available, the Handbook will be an indispensable resource for students both undergraduate and graduate levels, while the lively and provocative character of its essays make will it required reading for teachers of Shakespeare everywhere.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
« He tampers by night » : diplomatic agents and agency at night on the early modern stage In a letter to James I, Archbishop Abbot reveals the nocturnal interpretation of early modern diplomatic agency : « The lingering in England of the... more
« He tampers by night » : diplomatic agents and agency at night on the early modern stage
In a letter to James I, Archbishop Abbot reveals the nocturnal interpretation of early modern diplomatic agency : « The lingering in England of the Spanish ambassador, Zuñiga, is very suspicious. He […] tampers by night with the Lieger ambassador from France ». Early modern diplomatic spaces were fluctuant as official fixed residences did not yet exist and ambassadors were liminal figures whose speech and action were linked literally and symbolically with the night. The ambassador is a « shadow » who redefines the bright light of political authority in a paradoxical movement of obstruction and appeasement. This article offers to analyse the part played by night-time in diplomatic episodes on the early modern stage and how it helps defining both the temporal agency and the character of the ambassador. The study focuses on Ben Jonson’s Catiline by Ben Jonson, The Maid’s Tragedy
by Beaumont et Fletcher, Shakespeare's Hamlet, John Webster's The White Devil , and George Chapman's Monsieur d ’Olive.
« He tampers by night » : actes et acteurs diplomatiques sur la scène élisabéthaine
Dans une lettre à Jacques Ier, l’archevêque Abbot décrit la présence et l’action diplomatique sur le mode nocturne : « The lingering in England of the Spanish ambassador, Zuñiga, is very suspicious. He […] tampers by night with the Lieger ambassador from France ». Dans une ère où l’espace diplomatique échappe encore à l’ancrage spatial d’une résidence fixe, l’ambassadeur est figure de l’entre-deux dont le dire et le faire sont envisagés sur le mode symbolique et littéral de la nuit. Il est une source d’ombre venant redéfinir la lumière de l’autorité politique dans une dynamique paradoxale d’obstruction et d’apaisement. À travers l’étude de Catiline de Ben Jonson, cet article propose d’examiner comment la nuit participe à la définition du moment diplomatique dans le théâtre renaissant et accompagne la caractérisation paradoxale de la figure liminaire de l’ambassadeur sur scène. L’analyse de scènes nocturnes tirées de The Maid’s Tragedy de Beaumont et Fletcher, Hamlet de Shakespeare , The White Devil de John Webster, Monsieur d ’Olive de George Chapman, démonte les nouvelles stratégies de représentation d’une nuit qui se donne à concevoir plutôt qu’à voir.
In a letter to James I, Archbishop Abbot reveals the nocturnal interpretation of early modern diplomatic agency : « The lingering in England of the Spanish ambassador, Zuñiga, is very suspicious. He […] tampers by night with the Lieger ambassador from France ». Early modern diplomatic spaces were fluctuant as official fixed residences did not yet exist and ambassadors were liminal figures whose speech and action were linked literally and symbolically with the night. The ambassador is a « shadow » who redefines the bright light of political authority in a paradoxical movement of obstruction and appeasement. This article offers to analyse the part played by night-time in diplomatic episodes on the early modern stage and how it helps defining both the temporal agency and the character of the ambassador. The study focuses on Ben Jonson’s Catiline by Ben Jonson, The Maid’s Tragedy
by Beaumont et Fletcher, Shakespeare's Hamlet, John Webster's The White Devil , and George Chapman's Monsieur d ’Olive.
« He tampers by night » : actes et acteurs diplomatiques sur la scène élisabéthaine
Dans une lettre à Jacques Ier, l’archevêque Abbot décrit la présence et l’action diplomatique sur le mode nocturne : « The lingering in England of the Spanish ambassador, Zuñiga, is very suspicious. He […] tampers by night with the Lieger ambassador from France ». Dans une ère où l’espace diplomatique échappe encore à l’ancrage spatial d’une résidence fixe, l’ambassadeur est figure de l’entre-deux dont le dire et le faire sont envisagés sur le mode symbolique et littéral de la nuit. Il est une source d’ombre venant redéfinir la lumière de l’autorité politique dans une dynamique paradoxale d’obstruction et d’apaisement. À travers l’étude de Catiline de Ben Jonson, cet article propose d’examiner comment la nuit participe à la définition du moment diplomatique dans le théâtre renaissant et accompagne la caractérisation paradoxale de la figure liminaire de l’ambassadeur sur scène. L’analyse de scènes nocturnes tirées de The Maid’s Tragedy de Beaumont et Fletcher, Hamlet de Shakespeare , The White Devil de John Webster, Monsieur d ’Olive de George Chapman, démonte les nouvelles stratégies de représentation d’une nuit qui se donne à concevoir plutôt qu’à voir.
Research Interests:
"How did Elizabethan and Jacobean acting companies create their visual and aural effects? What materials were available to them and how did they impact on staging and writing? What impact did the sensations of theatre have on early modern... more
"How did Elizabethan and Jacobean acting companies create their visual and aural effects? What materials were available to them and how did they impact on staging and writing? What impact did the sensations of theatre have on early modern audiences? How did the construction of the playhouses themselves contribute to or enable technological innovations in the theatre and what impact might these innovations have had on the writing of plays in this period? This landmark collection of essays by leading international scholars addresses these and other question to create a unique and comprehensive overview of the practicalities and realities of the theatre in the early modern period."
Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Gender Studies, Theatre History, Teacher Education, New Historicism, and 16 moreGenre studies, Renaissance Studies, Shakespeare, Gender and Sexuality, Phenomenology, Pedagogy, Cultural Materialism, Renaissance drama, Curriculum Development, Early Modern English drama, Elizabethan Literature, Christopher Marlowe, New Economic Criticism, Jacobean theatre, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, and History of the Theater
Introduction (Paul PRESCOTT, Peter J. SMITH, Janice VALLS-RUSSELL) Theatre Reviewing à la mode des Cahiers (Janice VALLS-RUSSELL) I. WAYS OF BEING, WAYS OF SEEING Academic Reviewing, Interculturalism and Committed Aesthetics: Syncretic... more
Introduction (Paul PRESCOTT, Peter J. SMITH, Janice VALLS-RUSSELL)
Theatre Reviewing à la mode des Cahiers (Janice VALLS-RUSSELL)
I. WAYS OF BEING, WAYS OF SEEING
Academic Reviewing, Interculturalism and Committed Aesthetics: Syncretic Itineraries of a Reviewer (Nathalie RIVÈRE DE CARLES)
Objective Reviews? No, Thanks! (Markus MARTI)
Valuing Shakespearean Theatre Reviews (Rob ORMSBY)
Surveying Survey (Rob CONKIE)
“She will a handmaid be to his desires”: Theatre Reviewing in the Service of Education in Rex Gibson’s Shakespeare and Schools (Sarah OLIVE)
The Disappearing Audience: Reviewing Shakespeare in the UK (Irene MIDDLETON)
When is a Theatre Record not a Theatre Record? (Jeannie FARR)
The Newspaper Review: Constructing an Understanding of Shakespearean Performance in Madrid (1900-1936) (Juan F. CERDÁ)
What Becomes of a Performance Through (Second-Hand) Quotations of (Second-Hand) Reviews? (Isabelle SCHWARTZ-GASTINE)
II. SENSES OF PLACE
“So That’s Where That Phrase Comes From” Moments and Taffety Punks: Some Thoughts on the State of Theatre Reviewing in Washington, DC (Sara THOMPSON)
Reviewing the Reception of Yukio Ninagawa’s Shakespeare Productions (1999-2009) in the British and Japanese Press (Tomonari KUWAYAMA)
Reviewing Shakespeare in Bulgaria: Past and Present (Alexander SHURBANOV & Boika SOKOLOVA)
Shakespearean Performance Reviewing in Brazil (Margarida Gandara RAUEN)
Reviewing Tunisian Productions of Shakespeare’s Plays under Bourguiba and Ben Ali (Francis GUINLE)
Critical Conditions: Reviewing Shakespeare in South Africa (Colette GORDON)
Australian Newspaper Reviewers of Shakespeare: Writing with the Head or with the Heart? (Penny GAY)
Amateur Reviewing at the Avignon Festival: the “Mirror Group” (Florence MARCH)
Afterword (Peter HOLLAND)
Theatre Reviewing à la mode des Cahiers (Janice VALLS-RUSSELL)
I. WAYS OF BEING, WAYS OF SEEING
Academic Reviewing, Interculturalism and Committed Aesthetics: Syncretic Itineraries of a Reviewer (Nathalie RIVÈRE DE CARLES)
Objective Reviews? No, Thanks! (Markus MARTI)
Valuing Shakespearean Theatre Reviews (Rob ORMSBY)
Surveying Survey (Rob CONKIE)
“She will a handmaid be to his desires”: Theatre Reviewing in the Service of Education in Rex Gibson’s Shakespeare and Schools (Sarah OLIVE)
The Disappearing Audience: Reviewing Shakespeare in the UK (Irene MIDDLETON)
When is a Theatre Record not a Theatre Record? (Jeannie FARR)
The Newspaper Review: Constructing an Understanding of Shakespearean Performance in Madrid (1900-1936) (Juan F. CERDÁ)
What Becomes of a Performance Through (Second-Hand) Quotations of (Second-Hand) Reviews? (Isabelle SCHWARTZ-GASTINE)
II. SENSES OF PLACE
“So That’s Where That Phrase Comes From” Moments and Taffety Punks: Some Thoughts on the State of Theatre Reviewing in Washington, DC (Sara THOMPSON)
Reviewing the Reception of Yukio Ninagawa’s Shakespeare Productions (1999-2009) in the British and Japanese Press (Tomonari KUWAYAMA)
Reviewing Shakespeare in Bulgaria: Past and Present (Alexander SHURBANOV & Boika SOKOLOVA)
Shakespearean Performance Reviewing in Brazil (Margarida Gandara RAUEN)
Reviewing Tunisian Productions of Shakespeare’s Plays under Bourguiba and Ben Ali (Francis GUINLE)
Critical Conditions: Reviewing Shakespeare in South Africa (Colette GORDON)
Australian Newspaper Reviewers of Shakespeare: Writing with the Head or with the Heart? (Penny GAY)
Amateur Reviewing at the Avignon Festival: the “Mirror Group” (Florence MARCH)
Afterword (Peter HOLLAND)
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Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Gender Studies, Theatre Studies, New Historicism, Genre studies, and 11 moreShakespeare, Dramaturgy, Gender and Sexuality, Phenomenology, Drama, Pedagogy, Cultural Materialism, Curriculum Development, New Economic Criticism, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, and History of the Theater
The spectacle of strangeness in early modern drama underscores a paradoxical dynamic of seduction and repulsion. How can a playwright stage the untenable spectacle of violence and maintain the attention of the audience? This study... more
The spectacle of strangeness in early modern drama underscores a paradoxical dynamic of seduction and repulsion. How can a playwright stage the untenable spectacle of violence and maintain the attention of the audience? This study proposes to explore the various textual and ...
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Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Gender Studies, Theatre Studies, New Historicism, Genre studies, and 13 moreShakespeare, Dramaturgy, Gender and Sexuality, Phenomenology, Drama, Pedagogy, Materialism, Cultural Materialism, Early Modern Literature, Curriculum Development, New Economic Criticism, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, and History of the Theater
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À la Renaissance, le voir et le pouvoir sont intimement liés. Le prince victorieux est celui qui parvient à constamment éclipser ses adversaires. Dans Richard II, Shakespeare s’appuie sur le caractère spectaculaire de la royauté pour... more
À la Renaissance, le voir et le pouvoir sont intimement liés. Le prince victorieux est celui qui parvient à constamment éclipser ses adversaires. Dans Richard II, Shakespeare s’appuie sur le caractère spectaculaire de la royauté pour illustrer la tragédie du roi déposé. La dynamique du gain et de la perte, symbolique de la relation Richard/Bolingbroke, fait appel à de nombreux éléments matériels : la terre, l’argent, le mobilier, les accessoires royaux et le royaume lui-même.
2. Traduction : « Au pire, tu ne peux révéler qu’une perte terrestre. »
4La perte du pouvoir de Richard signifie la destruction et la reconstruction de la transcendance royale. Ce jeu entre mort et étrange renaissance est illustré par un sens de la perte profondément ancré dans le personnage de Richard et dans son entourage. En effet, c’est un roi agité qui déclare à Scroop : « The world is wordly loss thou canst unfold2. » (III.2.90). L’anxiété du monarque quant à la perte de son royaume s’incarne dans la métaphore du tissu de mots que Scroop doit déplier. Pour un metteur en scène, c’est dans cette formulation matérielle de l’angoisse politique de Richard que se trouve l’épicentre dramaturgique de la pièce. Cette anatomie de la destruction scénique de Richard s’achèvera avec des considérations sur le véritable devenir de l’icône richardienne et sur sa métamorphose en martyr. Pour ce faire, nous mettrons en regard le texte shakespearien et ses diverses adaptations en grande Bretagne depuis 1973 jusqu’en 2005
2. Traduction : « Au pire, tu ne peux révéler qu’une perte terrestre. »
4La perte du pouvoir de Richard signifie la destruction et la reconstruction de la transcendance royale. Ce jeu entre mort et étrange renaissance est illustré par un sens de la perte profondément ancré dans le personnage de Richard et dans son entourage. En effet, c’est un roi agité qui déclare à Scroop : « The world is wordly loss thou canst unfold2. » (III.2.90). L’anxiété du monarque quant à la perte de son royaume s’incarne dans la métaphore du tissu de mots que Scroop doit déplier. Pour un metteur en scène, c’est dans cette formulation matérielle de l’angoisse politique de Richard que se trouve l’épicentre dramaturgique de la pièce. Cette anatomie de la destruction scénique de Richard s’achèvera avec des considérations sur le véritable devenir de l’icône richardienne et sur sa métamorphose en martyr. Pour ce faire, nous mettrons en regard le texte shakespearien et ses diverses adaptations en grande Bretagne depuis 1973 jusqu’en 2005
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Shakespeare’s plays tell us how to see through the tempting snares of populism which please individual instincts at the expense of the individuals themselves and for sure at the cost of a sense of a collective present, notwithstanding... more
Shakespeare’s plays tell us how to see through the tempting snares of populism which please
individual instincts at the expense of the individuals themselves and for sure at the cost of a
sense of a collective present, notwithstanding the future. Populism is a conversation with a blind
and deaf self. Shakespeare’s theatre is about negotiating our local self with the unknown wider
collective and and leaving us entirely free whether to perform such negotiation.
Shakespeare is a diplomat, then! To some, “ambassador”, “diplomacy”, “negotiation” may be
bad words, but we are here to look beyond these clichés. The latter often betrays the tyrannical
desire of those using them of imposing their sole will and opinion. The perspective of this short
essay is not to dwell on the potential negative use of diplomacy and theatre, but to analyse their
relationship, assess their shortcomings and share new questions and perspectives.
After all, we are all ambassadors. If you have been on an exchange programme as a pupil, a
student or a teacher, then you have been an ambassador. An informal one indeed, an ambassador
extraordinary who carried with you your local conversations and tried to make them chime
with new ones. This is what Shakespeare does when he creates a sonnet or a play: he is a
borrower and a lender. This is what European cultural and citizen diplomacy is about:
borrowing and lending ideas, concerns, actions in Europe and beyond.
Shakespeare’s drama contains its own specific diplomacy, a European diplomacy in
conversation with the World, but a diplomacy which has been damaged because it has been used in a socially and territorially homogeneous way. It is time to reclaim Shakespeare as the ambassador of a Europe united in its diversity, in varietate concordia, an open Europe, mindful of the local and in respectful conversation with the global.
individual instincts at the expense of the individuals themselves and for sure at the cost of a
sense of a collective present, notwithstanding the future. Populism is a conversation with a blind
and deaf self. Shakespeare’s theatre is about negotiating our local self with the unknown wider
collective and and leaving us entirely free whether to perform such negotiation.
Shakespeare is a diplomat, then! To some, “ambassador”, “diplomacy”, “negotiation” may be
bad words, but we are here to look beyond these clichés. The latter often betrays the tyrannical
desire of those using them of imposing their sole will and opinion. The perspective of this short
essay is not to dwell on the potential negative use of diplomacy and theatre, but to analyse their
relationship, assess their shortcomings and share new questions and perspectives.
After all, we are all ambassadors. If you have been on an exchange programme as a pupil, a
student or a teacher, then you have been an ambassador. An informal one indeed, an ambassador
extraordinary who carried with you your local conversations and tried to make them chime
with new ones. This is what Shakespeare does when he creates a sonnet or a play: he is a
borrower and a lender. This is what European cultural and citizen diplomacy is about:
borrowing and lending ideas, concerns, actions in Europe and beyond.
Shakespeare’s drama contains its own specific diplomacy, a European diplomacy in
conversation with the World, but a diplomacy which has been damaged because it has been used in a socially and territorially homogeneous way. It is time to reclaim Shakespeare as the ambassador of a Europe united in its diversity, in varietate concordia, an open Europe, mindful of the local and in respectful conversation with the global.
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The Winter's Tale is a fable about the lethal entrapment of a man in his own mental labyrinth of jealousy. Lilo Baur quotes La Rochefoucauld's maxim that "Jealousy is twin-born with love, but does not always die with... more
The Winter's Tale is a fable about the lethal entrapment of a man in his own mental labyrinth of jealousy. Lilo Baur quotes La Rochefoucauld's maxim that "Jealousy is twin-born with love, but does not always die with love" as the main inspiration for her scenography. Her ...
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Research Interests: History, Eighteenth-Century literature, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Diplomacy, Early Republic--American History, and 4 moreEarly Modern British Literature, Early Colonial History of the Americas, Early Modern East Asian History, and global history of art, global early modernity, Medici and Persia
In Women, Diplomacy and International Politics since 1500, Mirella Marini explains that: 'The aristocratic diplomats were not necessarily there to draft the papers. The professionals handled the legal work, but the courtiers were there to... more
In Women, Diplomacy and International Politics since 1500, Mirella Marini explains that: 'The aristocratic diplomats were not necessarily there to draft the papers. The professionals handled the legal work, but the courtiers were there to use a specific 'court language''. (99) This 'specific court language' is not only verbal, but physical and material. The 2019 edition of The Splendid Encounters will question the gestures of diplomacy both in their literal and symbolic forms. It will consider the evolution of the production and the reception of gestures in diplomacy from the late middle-ages to the post-Westphalian world as a part of a reassessment of the transition from old to new diplomacy. This colloquium will gather researchers in history, literature, art history, political science to reflect on the relationship between diplomacy and the body. During the medieval era, the ambassador was considered as a human letter: he was offered as an object for the foreign master to read, to observe and to manipulate in space as well as to listen to. The ambassador as a gift and as a language is an aspect of the diplomatic activity which, albeit its self-evidence, has been left unexplored. This conference would like to bridge this gap between seminal works produced on the material economy of diplomacy such as Brinda Charry and Gitanjali Shahani's Emissaries in Early Modern Literature and Culture and the actual semiotic language implied by moving bodies in a diplomatic context. Based on Ellen R. Welch's compelling study of the use of entertainment and theatre in early modern French diplomacy in A Theatre of Diplomacy (2017), the organisers would like to explore the dramatic nature of diplomacy as in the physical and material aspects of the trade. We would like to focus on the gestures of the ambassadors and their masters, but also on how they were perceived and understood by the diplomatic and non-diplomatic circles (arts, theatre, proto-journalism, travellers etc). We will thus focus on the tenets of the training of an ambassador both in theoretical treaties and in practice. The expectations regarding the material and the physical
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Book Reviews: The Quest for Cardenio: Shakespeare, Fletcher, Cervantes, and the Lost Play, Shakespeare beyond Doubt, Screening Early Modern Drama: Beyond Shakespeare, Shakespeare au Festival d'Avignon. Configurations textuelles et scéniques, Shakespeare and Contemporary Fiction. Theorizing Foundl...more
but that his errors were honest mistakes, not wilful frauds: “Moseley and/or his source might well have been wrong about what Shakespeare wrote. But premeditated fraud seems unlikely” (20). As for Moseley’s ascription of “The History of... more
but that his errors were honest mistakes, not wilful frauds: “Moseley and/or his source might well have been wrong about what Shakespeare wrote. But premeditated fraud seems unlikely” (20). As for Moseley’s ascription of “The History of Cardenio” as collaborative, Taylor argues that the publisher and bookseller likely had it right: Of the 52 plays in Fletcher’s canon, only 15 are solo, thus, “odds are he [Fletcher] had at least one partner” (19). But since there are only two plays by Shakespeare and Fletcher that we know of, those same odds suggest that Fletcher was far more likely to have written the play alone (15/52 for solo Fletcher vs. 2/52 for Shakespeare/Fletcher; a solo Fletcher is thus 7.5 times more likely than a Shakespeare/Fletcher). Putting Fletcher aside for the moment, is there anything else to suggest that Moseley was correct in assigning “The History of Cardenio” to Shakespeare? Yes, argues Taylor, who points out that Shakespeare used the locution “The History of” in three of his titles. “By contrast, the phrase does not appear in any Fletcher title, or anywhere in Fletcher’s works. [...] Massinger, whom Malone offered as an alternative candidate for author or co-author, never used it” (21). Does Taylor make too much of the title, which, after all, may or may not have been composed by Shakespeare? Writing on the King’s Men’s performances of “Cardenno” and “Cardenna”, Taylor allows that “evidence of carelessness and imprecision in play titles does not warrant attributing excessive authority” (23). Yet when circling around to the title “The History of Cardenio,” Taylor asserts that:
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Research Interests: Diplomatic History, English Literature, Theatre History, Multilingualism, Diplomatic Studies, and 12 moreEarly Modern Europe, Diplomacy, Renaissance drama, Shakespearean Drama, Early Modern theatre studies, Theatre, Seventeenth Century English Literature, Thomas Heywood, Diplomatie, Queen Elizabeth I, Diplomacy and international relations, and Soft Power and Public Diplomacy
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‘The Embassador … ought to have a tincture of the comedian, (…), there is not a more comical personage than the Embassador.’ In Wicquefort’s definition, the ambassador is not identified solely as an actor but, more interestingly, as a... more
‘The Embassador … ought to have a tincture of the comedian, (…), there is not a more comical personage than the Embassador.’ In Wicquefort’s definition, the ambassador is not identified solely as an actor but, more interestingly, as a character, as a rhetorical and a structural locus for an idea, namely appeasement. At first, he seems to be reduced to an actor, but the word ‘comedian’ means more than performance. It refers to the genre of comedy and its action: the ambassador as character helps to resolve the initial comic conflict and to favour the return to peace through a symbolic event. Focusing on two Jacobean plays, Ben Jonson’s political tragedy Catiline and William Shakespeare’s tragicomedy Measure for Measure, the chapter deals with the gradual transformation of ambassadorial characters from a passive to an active Catastrophe, the creation of a new type of character, the diplomatic character, and how the latter plays a part in the appeasement of dramatic conflicts. Finally, we analyse how diplomatic indirect characterization, especially in a tragicomic context, is an oblique strategy of appeasement (the diplomatic coup d’etat) and a subtle discussion of both the principal’s hubris and the ambassador’s ill counsel.
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The spectacle of strangeness in early modern drama underscores a paradoxical dynamic of seduction and repulsion. How can a playwright stage the untenable spectacle of violence and maintain the attention of the audience? This study... more
The spectacle of strangeness in early modern drama underscores a paradoxical dynamic of seduction and repulsion. How can a playwright stage the untenable spectacle of violence and maintain the attention of the audience? This study proposes to explore the various textual and ...
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Thus Lucy Bailey defines her directorial choice and the overall atmosphere of her production in the programme to this season RSC Julius Caesar. The choice of violent hysteria, the atmosphere of a civil war ready to start, the curse of a... more
Thus Lucy Bailey defines her directorial choice and the overall atmosphere of her production in the programme to this season RSC Julius Caesar. The choice of violent hysteria, the atmosphere of a civil war ready to start, the curse of a city predicated on fratricide, the confrontation of tyrants an
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Sir Henry Wotton’s definition of an ambassador as “an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country” should be confronted with his later assessment that the ambassador “should alwayes, and upon all occasions speak the truth …... more
Sir Henry Wotton’s definition of an ambassador as “an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country” should be confronted with his later assessment that the ambassador “should alwayes, and upon all occasions speak the truth … ’twill also put [his] Adversaries (who will still hunt counter) to a loss in all their disquisitions, and undertakings.” Wotton’s contrasting views point to the early modern concern with true, bold, and plain speech, known as parrhesia, and its importance in diplomatic practice. Combining Quentin Skinner’s rhetorical approach to political language and Timothy Hampton’s literary analysis of diplomacy, this essay examines Shakespeare’s mirror of diplomatic speech featured in Henry V (ca. 1599) in light of Jean Hotman’s reflections on parrhesia in The Ambassador (1603). Analyzing theoretical and dramatic views of parrhesiastic speech in early modern diplomacy, the essay argues for diplomatic parrhesia as a matter of trustworthiness rather than sincerity. Shakespeare introduces a new perspective on the ambassador’s speech and its function and on the capacity of authorities to hear truthful speech, while reasserting the political necessity of good parrhesia.
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Whether irreverent, excessively respectful, destructive or regenerative, the reception of Shakespearean tragedies in France involves a double dialogue: namely a vertical one ‘between the past and the present, and also ... some lateral... more
Whether irreverent, excessively respectful, destructive or regenerative, the reception of Shakespearean tragedies in France involves a double dialogue: namely a vertical one ‘between the past and the present, and also ... some lateral dialogue in which crossing boundaries of place or language or genre is as important as crossing those of time’. The vertical form of dialogue is part of the creative process of realizing a Renaissance work of art and gives it its timeless flexibility. However, the power of their reception on the French stage is best expressed in the lateral form of dialogue. This chapter will treat the vertical, historiographical dialogue as both a natural cause and consequence of the lateral dialogue, which takes four shapes: the critical reception of Shakespeare’s tragedies, their linguistic reception, their stage reception, and finally their refiguration or metamorphosis into an alphabet for new works. The dialogue between the past and the present will form the thre...
Research Interests: Art and Oxford university
The “Rhetoric of Violence in Early Modern Europe” took this issue of the Cahiers Shakespeare en devenir in two new directions. The editors have chosen to take English Renaissance drama and the study of dramatic practices in the wider... more
The “Rhetoric of Violence in Early Modern Europe” took this issue of the Cahiers Shakespeare en devenir in two new directions. The editors have chosen to take English Renaissance drama and the study of dramatic practices in the wider early modern European socio-political context. Studying the practi
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Research Interests: Literature and Diplomacy
The Winter's Tale is a fable about the lethal entrapment of a man in his own mental labyrinth of jealousy. Lilo Baur quotes La Rochefoucauld's maxim that "Jealousy is twin-born with love, but does not always die with... more
The Winter's Tale is a fable about the lethal entrapment of a man in his own mental labyrinth of jealousy. Lilo Baur quotes La Rochefoucauld's maxim that "Jealousy is twin-born with love, but does not always die with love" as the main inspiration for her scenography. Her ...
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Le spectacle de la royauté implique un recours à des stratégies symboliques précises. Celles-ci sont issues de l’étiquette royale et des représentations picturales dont elle fait l’objet. Le décorum royal est la forme matérielle du rituel... more
Le spectacle de la royauté implique un recours à des stratégies symboliques précises. Celles-ci sont issues de l’étiquette royale et des représentations picturales dont elle fait l’objet. Le décorum royal est la forme matérielle du rituel politique et joue un rôle fondamental dans la création du roi. Lors d’une allocution à la Chambre des Communes, en 1586, la reine Elisabeth 1re souligna le caractère théâtral des monarques : « We princes, I tell you, are set on stages in the sight and view o..
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In 1627, an alleged murder plot involving a dagger targeted Georges Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham during his expedition to the Isle of Ré. In 1628, John Felton, a veteran of that same expedition, killed Buckingham with a dagger. This... more
In 1627, an alleged murder plot involving a dagger targeted Georges Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham during his expedition to the Isle of Ré. In 1628, John Felton, a veteran of that same expedition, killed Buckingham with a dagger. This article examines the failure of Buckingham's branding strategy based on the transformation of real weapons into fictional items. It considers three of Buckingham's political self-fashioning objects: his armour in the Mytens portrait, a dagger and a coranto of news. These are contrasted with their reception in Thomas Heywood's tragicomedy The Royal King and the Loyal Subject, diplomatic relations, and libels.
Research Interests: English Literature, Early Modern History, Politics, Political communication, Political Assassinations, and 14 moreSir Philip Sidney, Political propaganda and Literature, Literary studies, Thomas Heywood, Materiality, Arms and Armour, Charles I, Ancient Weapons and Warfare, Henri IV, Huguenots in La Rochelle, Dagger, George Villiers Duke of Buckingham, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, and Buckingham
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Richelieu defined the art of diplomacy as that of a "perpetual negotiation," and identified both the strategy and the very form of this discipline. It is not only a continuous activity, but an activity which is continually... more
Richelieu defined the art of diplomacy as that of a "perpetual negotiation," and identified both the strategy and the very form of this discipline. It is not only a continuous activity, but an activity which is continually renegotiated in its most formal and informal aspects. This volume analyses the changing theoretical and practical forms of political, economic and cultural diplomacy from the early modern era to the questioning of the Westphalian system in the 20th and the 21st centuries. I..
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The philosopher Alain synthesized the French approach to Shakespeare when he announced: ‘If Hamlet fell down to Earth, naked, without its procession of admirers, the critics would mock it, not without the semblance of a reason.’... more
The philosopher Alain synthesized the French approach to Shakespeare when he announced: ‘If Hamlet fell down to Earth, naked, without its procession of admirers, the critics would mock it, not without the semblance of a reason.’ Contrasting the quest for the essence of a work of art as opposed to its mere existence, he emphasized an enduring dualism in the French reception of Shakespearean tragedy. Between Voltaire’s rejection and the Romantics’ adoration of the ‘black sun’, Shakespeare generated a dialogue in French art. Starting with the critical reception, this chapter shows how Shakespearean tragedy became the instrument of a reflection on Liberty. The stage dynamic of destruction and regeneration in the treatment of Shakespearean tragedies produced a call for new liberated approaches to French dramatic language. Shakespeare thus became a laboratory where translators, adaptors, stage directors, and actors would put their trade to the test of a protean script and free themselves from the strictures of national tradition.
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To study the arras in both an architectural and a textual perspective is to highlight the tight links between weaving a tapestry and weaving a text Through a textual and dramatic analysis of poetic writings (Hero and Leander) and plays... more
To study the arras in both an architectural and a textual perspective is to highlight the tight links between weaving a tapestry and weaving a text Through a textual and dramatic analysis of poetic writings (Hero and Leander) and plays with comic and tragic insights (Love’s Labours Lost, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2), this paper attempts to underline the integration of the arras in Renaissance drama. Thus, tapestries are considered first as essential features of dramatic technicalities and second as fictional elements supporting a heterogeneous textual composition. The arras on stage exemplifies a double mode of writing, where characters are mirrored by real and/or verbal tapestries. Moreover, the arras proves to be a laminar space from where a whole range of meanings can emerge and touch the Elizabethan audience. The relation between Minerva and Thespis allows us to witness the complexity of a creative area and the significant metamorphosis of a theatrical and pictorial heritage.
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Est-ce qu’une bonne amazone est une amazone morte ? S’inscrivant dans l’etude de cette tradition esthetique qu’est l’amazonomachie, cet article tente de se pencher sur les mecanismes de destruction et de survivance de l’identite feminine... more
Est-ce qu’une bonne amazone est une amazone morte ? S’inscrivant dans l’etude de cette tradition esthetique qu’est l’amazonomachie, cet article tente de se pencher sur les mecanismes de destruction et de survivance de l’identite feminine dans le cadre de crises politiques et militaires. Par le biais d’une etude croisee de pieces anglaises et francaises ainsi que de textes philosophiques en prose, nous allons montrer le role paradoxal attribue aux femmes fortes (femmes soldats et femmes au pouvoir) dans les essais et les arts populaires de la premiere modernite. Mettant en perspective la representation et l’identite feminines, nous explorerons les strategies d’acceptation de la figure emblematique sans cesse resemiotisee de l’Amazone a la Renaissance.
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Óscar Alfredo Ruiz Fernández, England and Spain in the Early Modern Era: Royal Love, Diplomacy, Trade and Naval Relations, 1604–25 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), xi+281 pp., ISBN 978-1-78-453117-1, £81.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781350245303,... more
Óscar Alfredo Ruiz Fernández, England and Spain in the Early Modern Era: Royal Love, Diplomacy, Trade and Naval Relations, 1604–25 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), xi+281 pp., ISBN 978-1-78-453117-1, £81.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781350245303, £26.00 (pbk), ISBN 9781350133426, £21.00 (epub). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano-Echevarría (eds), Exile, Diplomacy and Texts: Exchanges between Iberia and the British Isles, 1500–1767, Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture, 74 (Leiden: Brill, 2021), xii+232 pp., ISBN: 9789004273658, €105 (hbk), ISBN: 9789004438040, open access (epub).
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The portrait of Queen Elizabeth receiving Dutch ambassadors in 15851 illustrates both the complex form and content of early modern diplomacy and its conception of peace. The ambassadors had come to negotiate England’s help against Spanish... more
The portrait of Queen Elizabeth receiving Dutch ambassadors in 15851 illustrates both the complex form and content of early modern diplomacy and its conception of peace. The ambassadors had come to negotiate England’s help against Spanish rule in the Netherlands. Elizabeth was offered election as countess of Holland and was thus faced with the possibility of an open diplomatic and military conflict with Spain. Although Elizabeth did not altogether dismiss the Dutch embassy, she opted for a peace mediation with Spain instead.2 As John Watkins and Carole Levin explain, Elizabeth was still influenced by ‘an older diplomatic model, in which all Europeans were imagined to be capable of working toward peace in common hope of salvation.’3 Such commitment to European peace is illustrated by Elizabeth opting for the ‘Burgundian solution’ which guaranteed Spanish rule over the Netherlands, minus Spain’s military presence there, while preserving Dutch traditional liberties and, more particularly, liberty of conscience.4 The painting and the decades of diplomatic negotiations that it illustrates testify to the Elizabethan attempt at preserving the consensus christianus, a pursuit prolonged in the Jacobean policy of appeasement. Monarchs, ambassadors, diplomatic figures of all creeds and nationalities struggled with fostering, or simply maintaining, peace. However, the opening years of the seventeenth century were faced with a daunting, and sadly familiar, threat: the rejection of the European consensus.
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“Let's place our selues within the Curtaines, / for good faith the Stage is so very little we shall wrong / the generall eye els very much”. John Marston's stage directions for his play What you Will stresses that the Renaissance... more
“Let's place our selues within the Curtaines, / for good faith the Stage is so very little we shall wrong / the generall eye els very much”. John Marston's stage directions for his play What you Will stresses that the Renaissance playing space is hardly thought about without curtains as material landmarks. Yet, this prop is constantly denied its existence and its impact on the Shakespearean stage. . . Despite textual evidence as the murder of Polonius behind the arras in Hamlet, there are still doubts about the role of curtains in Renaissance scenography. The purpose of this study is not only to reassert the existence of curtains thanks to archaeological data but to assess the impact of the material culture on the writing and the performance of dramatic texts. Since the Middle Ages, acting troupes have used a varied amount of cloths, tapestries and veils on stage. Those props are keys to the scenographical consciousness of the 16th and 17th centuries playwrights and actors. We will consider the flexibility and the complexity of the theatrical space and practices through an object belonging to both the domestic and the dramatic worlds
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Shakespeare n’est pas philosophe. Soit. Et nombre de ses pointes ironiques a l’egard des philosophes temoignent de la defiance qu’ils lui inspiraient. Mais outre qu’il aura ete influence par diverses traditions philosophiques, provenant... more
Shakespeare n’est pas philosophe. Soit. Et nombre de ses pointes ironiques a l’egard des philosophes temoignent de la defiance qu’ils lui inspiraient. Mais outre qu’il aura ete influence par diverses traditions philosophiques, provenant de l’Antiquite comme de la Renaissance, son œuvre, depuis le XVIIIe siecle jusqu’a nos jours, n’a cesse d’inspirer celles des philosophes. Aussi interroger Shakespeare au risque de la philosophie n’est pas l’aborder avec la volonte de soumettre son theâtre au regne du concept dans l’espoir secret de le demythifier. C’est a l’inverse le prendre au serieux, sans complaisance et jusque dans ses provocations, afin de faire entendre son propos et ses questions. Fruit d’une collaboration originale entre anglicistes et philosophes, cet ouvrage constitue un apport inedit aux etudes shakespeariennes de langue francaise.
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In 1627, an alleged murder plot involving a dagger targeted Georges Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham during his expedition to the Isle of Ré. In 1628, John Felton, a veteran of that same expedition, killed Buckingham with a dagger. This... more
In 1627, an alleged murder plot involving a dagger targeted Georges Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham during his expedition to the Isle of Ré. In 1628, John Felton, a veteran of that same expedition, killed Buckingham with a dagger. This article examines the failure of Buckingham's branding strategy based on the transformation of real weapons into fictional items. It considers three of Buckingham's political self-fashioning objects: his armour in the Mytens portrait, a dagger and a coranto of news. These are contrasted with their reception in Thomas Heywood's tragicomedy The Royal King and the Loyal Subject, diplomatic relations, and libels.
Research Interests: English Literature, Early Modern History, Politics, Political communication, Political Assassinations, and 14 moreSir Philip Sidney, Political propaganda and Literature, Literary studies, Thomas Heywood, Materiality, Arms and Armour, Charles I, Ancient Weapons and Warfare, Henri IV, Huguenots in La Rochelle, Dagger, George Villiers Duke of Buckingham, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, and Buckingham
Research Interests: Diplomatic History, English Literature, Theatre History, Multilingualism, Diplomatic Studies, and 11 moreEarly Modern Europe, Renaissance drama, Shakespearean Drama, Early Modern theatre studies, Theatre, Seventeenth Century English Literature, Thomas Heywood, Diplomatie, Queen Elizabeth I, Diplomacy and international relations, and Soft Power and Public Diplomacy
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Résumé/Abstract To study the arras in both an architectural and a textual perspective is to highlight the tight links between weaving a tapestry and weaving a text. Through a textual and dramatic analysis of poetic writings (Hero and... more
Résumé/Abstract To study the arras in both an architectural and a textual perspective is to highlight the tight links between weaving a tapestry and weaving a text. Through a textual and dramatic analysis of poetic writings (Hero and Leander) and plays with comic and ...
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‘The Embassador … ought to have a tincture of the comedian, (…), there is not a more comical personage than the Embassador.’ In Wicquefort’s definition, the ambassador is not identified solely as an actor but, more interestingly, as a... more
‘The Embassador … ought to have a tincture of the comedian, (…), there is not a more comical personage than the Embassador.’ In Wicquefort’s definition, the ambassador is not identified solely as an actor but, more interestingly, as a character, as a rhetorical and a structural locus for an idea, namely appeasement. At first, he seems to be reduced to an actor, but the word ‘comedian’ means more than performance. It refers to the genre of comedy and its action: the ambassador as character helps to resolve the initial comic conflict and to favour the return to peace through a symbolic event. Focusing on two Jacobean plays, Ben Jonson’s political tragedy Catiline and William Shakespeare’s tragicomedy Measure for Measure, the chapter deals with the gradual transformation of ambassadorial characters from a passive to an active Catastrophe, the creation of a new type of character, the diplomatic character, and how the latter plays a part in the appeasement of dramatic conflicts. Finally, we analyse how diplomatic indirect characterization, especially in a tragicomic context, is an oblique strategy of appeasement (the diplomatic coup d’etat) and a subtle discussion of both the principal’s hubris and the ambassador’s ill counsel.
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The portrait of Queen Elizabeth receiving Dutch ambassadors in 15851 illustrates both the complex form and content of early modern diplomacy and its conception of peace. The ambassadors had come to negotiate England’s help against Spanish... more
The portrait of Queen Elizabeth receiving Dutch ambassadors in 15851 illustrates both the complex form and content of early modern diplomacy and its conception of peace. The ambassadors had come to negotiate England’s help against Spanish rule in the Netherlands. Elizabeth was offered election as countess of Holland and was thus faced with the possibility of an open diplomatic and military conflict with Spain. Although Elizabeth did not altogether dismiss the Dutch embassy, she opted for a peace mediation with Spain instead.2 As John Watkins and Carole Levin explain, Elizabeth was still influenced by ‘an older diplomatic model, in which all Europeans were imagined to be capable of working toward peace in common hope of salvation.’3 Such commitment to European peace is illustrated by Elizabeth opting for the ‘Burgundian solution’ which guaranteed Spanish rule over the Netherlands, minus Spain’s military presence there, while preserving Dutch traditional liberties and, more particularly, liberty of conscience.4 The painting and the decades of diplomatic negotiations that it illustrates testify to the Elizabethan attempt at preserving the consensus christianus, a pursuit prolonged in the Jacobean policy of appeasement. Monarchs, ambassadors, diplomatic figures of all creeds and nationalities struggled with fostering, or simply maintaining, peace. However, the opening years of the seventeenth century were faced with a daunting, and sadly familiar, threat: the rejection of the European consensus.