chant here, and which the Jew?” (4.1.172), and implies the essential sameness of the two. Each ex... more chant here, and which the Jew?” (4.1.172), and implies the essential sameness of the two. Each exploits particular mercantile interests; neither the native nor the alien recognizes a general civic virtue. It’s worth noting that Shakespeare’s most constructive magistrate is also one of his most tempered characters. Eight years after Merchant, Measure for Measure’s Escalus, responding to a charge of pimping, hears the garbled case of Pompey after the exacting Angelo has left the scene. The Tempest invokes the uses of history illustrated in Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia (translated in English by 1579). Poised between the real past of bad rule (Prospero’s Milan) and an illusionary proposal for good rule (Gonzalo’s commonwealth), the play dramatizes the moves necessary to govern the body politic. In Hadfield’s view, Prospero is only partly successful: he returns “to Europe as if it really were the ‘brave new world’ (5.1.183) his daughter imagines when she sees Europeans in numbers for the first time” (224)—if so, he has betrayed the solid sense of history he shows when he answers her: “’tis new to thee” (5.1.186). Audiences can decide whether Prospero does not, in fact, honor his sense of the “not-new” (as illustrated in the repetitive cycles of Guicciardini’s history) when he acknowledges Caliban, his natural man and native subject; dismisses Ariel, the technician responsible for realizing his Machiavellian art; and forgives the men who threatened his life but were also, in view of his own history of feckless reclusiveness, not entirely blameworthy. Hadfield’s Shakespeare and Renaissance Politics entertains these and other topics with comprehensive erudition. Readers will find it an indispensable guide to the politics dramatized in the plays.
Anglia - Zeitschrift für englische Philologie, 1991
Ein entscheidendes, wenn nicht sogar das entscheidende Ereignis in James Joyces Portrait of the A... more Ein entscheidendes, wenn nicht sogar das entscheidende Ereignis in James Joyces Portrait of the Artist ist der Augenblick, in dem Stephen die Bedeutung seines Namens entdeckt: Dedalus. Was für den Schuljungen soziales Stigma, das Etikett seines noch keineswegs als Privileg erfahrenen Außenseitertums gewesen ist What kind of a name is that?" wird er von den Klassenkameraden verhört -, das kehrt sich nun, gegen Ende des vierten Kapitels, in Verheißung um. "Now, äs never before, his stränge name seemed to him a prophecy." Sein seltsamer Name enthüllt ihm plötzlich seine Berufung zum Künstler. Es ist ein ekstatischer Augenblick, eine Epiphanie, wie Joyce "a sudden spiritual manifestation", das plötzliche Aufscheinen des bislang Ungesehenen im Alltäglichen nennt, und so, wie Stephens Vorstellung sich mit dem mythischen Vogelmenschen identifiziert, so schwingt der Text sich auf zu einer Passage jener purple prose, von der die neuere Joyceforschung annimmt, sie müsse die bereits vollzogene ironische Distanzierung des Autors Joyce von seinem Jugendbildnis Stephen anzeigen. Now, at the name of the fabulous artificer, he seemed to hear the noise of dim waves and to see a winged form flying above the waves and slowly climbing the air. What did it mean? Was it a quaint device opening a page of some medieval book of prophecies and
... Wilde is exemplary, in that his art has its roots in much the same predicament as ... Reversi... more ... Wilde is exemplary, in that his art has its roots in much the same predicament as ... Reversing this equation, it is perhaps equally plausible to describe Wil-dean 'decadence' as a pre-postmodernism of ... to quarrel with this, except that such a statement might conceal the fact that ...
Anglia - Zeitschrift für englische Philologie, 2001
From the twelfth century onwards, the supposedly clear-cut distinction between man and beast came... more From the twelfth century onwards, the supposedly clear-cut distinction between man and beast came to be perceived as an increasingly blurred relation of dynamic exchange rather than rigorous delimitation. During the Renaissance, the advent of empirical methods in the natural sciences gave rise to an enlightened view of both animals and mankind, with the former losing many of their fabled anthropomorphisms and the latter beginning to acknowledge, and focus on its own physicality. Responding to the often reductively conciliatory readings of studies of Shakespeare's imagery conducted by the New Critics, this essay analyses the various ways in which the imagery in King Lear reflects and develops different facets of this twilight zone between humanity and the animal kingdom. It shows how the text employs animal imagery both pejoratively to illustrate depravity and degeneracy, and affirmatively to indicate pastoral visions of placation, withdrawal and escape.
In NTQ 4 (1985) we included a fully-illustrated interview with the German director Peter Zadek co... more In NTQ 4 (1985) we included a fully-illustrated interview with the German director Peter Zadek conducted by Roy Kift. Here, Andreas Höfele explores one of the subjects touched on in that interview, as in most responses to Zadek's work: the utilization of the erotic as a recurring motif. From his introduction to London of the then little-known work of Jean Genet to his most recent productions – of Wedekind's Lulu and of Chekhov's Ivanov – Zadek has, in Höfele”s words, opted for ‘the kaleidoscopic uncertainty of play’ and a ‘deliberate lack of closure’, which are here analyzed in terms of Baudrillard's ‘structure of seduction’ employed both as aesthetic principle and as working method. Andreas Höfele, who has taught in the German Department of Edinburgh University and in the English Department at Würzburg, has been Professor of Theaterwissenschaft at the University of Munich since 1986. Apart from four novels, and books on Shakespeare's stagecraft and Malcolm Lowry...
Religious pluralization entails not just the various ways in which the historical processes of pl... more Religious pluralization entails not just the various ways in which the historical processes of pluralization were reflcted in cultural artifacts, but also, crucially, the cultural work that spawned these processes. Reflecting, driving, shaping and subverting religious systems, representation becomes a divisive force in Reformation Europe as religious pluralization erupts in a contest over how to conceive, to symbolize and to perform religious belief.
European Studies: A Journal of European Culture, …, 2001
... According to The Times 'Friday night's Millen-nium Dome show bore all the hallmarks... more ... According to The Times 'Friday night's Millen-nium Dome show bore all the hallmarks of having been processed through the Blair blandness machine ... at least, is the promise the site extends to its well over half a million visitors per year,7 the magical aura carefully sustained ...
... A Theater of Exhaustion? "Posthistoire" in Recent German Shakespeare Productions AN... more ... A Theater of Exhaustion? "Posthistoire" in Recent German Shakespeare Productions ANDREAS HOFELE The "posthistoire" idea is now new. ... 6 Norbert Bolz, "Die Zeit des Weltspiels," Asthetik und Kommunikation, 17 (1986), 115. 7 Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1979. 8 Cf. ...
chant here, and which the Jew?” (4.1.172), and implies the essential sameness of the two. Each ex... more chant here, and which the Jew?” (4.1.172), and implies the essential sameness of the two. Each exploits particular mercantile interests; neither the native nor the alien recognizes a general civic virtue. It’s worth noting that Shakespeare’s most constructive magistrate is also one of his most tempered characters. Eight years after Merchant, Measure for Measure’s Escalus, responding to a charge of pimping, hears the garbled case of Pompey after the exacting Angelo has left the scene. The Tempest invokes the uses of history illustrated in Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia (translated in English by 1579). Poised between the real past of bad rule (Prospero’s Milan) and an illusionary proposal for good rule (Gonzalo’s commonwealth), the play dramatizes the moves necessary to govern the body politic. In Hadfield’s view, Prospero is only partly successful: he returns “to Europe as if it really were the ‘brave new world’ (5.1.183) his daughter imagines when she sees Europeans in numbers for the first time” (224)—if so, he has betrayed the solid sense of history he shows when he answers her: “’tis new to thee” (5.1.186). Audiences can decide whether Prospero does not, in fact, honor his sense of the “not-new” (as illustrated in the repetitive cycles of Guicciardini’s history) when he acknowledges Caliban, his natural man and native subject; dismisses Ariel, the technician responsible for realizing his Machiavellian art; and forgives the men who threatened his life but were also, in view of his own history of feckless reclusiveness, not entirely blameworthy. Hadfield’s Shakespeare and Renaissance Politics entertains these and other topics with comprehensive erudition. Readers will find it an indispensable guide to the politics dramatized in the plays.
Anglia - Zeitschrift für englische Philologie, 1991
Ein entscheidendes, wenn nicht sogar das entscheidende Ereignis in James Joyces Portrait of the A... more Ein entscheidendes, wenn nicht sogar das entscheidende Ereignis in James Joyces Portrait of the Artist ist der Augenblick, in dem Stephen die Bedeutung seines Namens entdeckt: Dedalus. Was für den Schuljungen soziales Stigma, das Etikett seines noch keineswegs als Privileg erfahrenen Außenseitertums gewesen ist What kind of a name is that?" wird er von den Klassenkameraden verhört -, das kehrt sich nun, gegen Ende des vierten Kapitels, in Verheißung um. "Now, äs never before, his stränge name seemed to him a prophecy." Sein seltsamer Name enthüllt ihm plötzlich seine Berufung zum Künstler. Es ist ein ekstatischer Augenblick, eine Epiphanie, wie Joyce "a sudden spiritual manifestation", das plötzliche Aufscheinen des bislang Ungesehenen im Alltäglichen nennt, und so, wie Stephens Vorstellung sich mit dem mythischen Vogelmenschen identifiziert, so schwingt der Text sich auf zu einer Passage jener purple prose, von der die neuere Joyceforschung annimmt, sie müsse die bereits vollzogene ironische Distanzierung des Autors Joyce von seinem Jugendbildnis Stephen anzeigen. Now, at the name of the fabulous artificer, he seemed to hear the noise of dim waves and to see a winged form flying above the waves and slowly climbing the air. What did it mean? Was it a quaint device opening a page of some medieval book of prophecies and
... Wilde is exemplary, in that his art has its roots in much the same predicament as ... Reversi... more ... Wilde is exemplary, in that his art has its roots in much the same predicament as ... Reversing this equation, it is perhaps equally plausible to describe Wil-dean 'decadence' as a pre-postmodernism of ... to quarrel with this, except that such a statement might conceal the fact that ...
Anglia - Zeitschrift für englische Philologie, 2001
From the twelfth century onwards, the supposedly clear-cut distinction between man and beast came... more From the twelfth century onwards, the supposedly clear-cut distinction between man and beast came to be perceived as an increasingly blurred relation of dynamic exchange rather than rigorous delimitation. During the Renaissance, the advent of empirical methods in the natural sciences gave rise to an enlightened view of both animals and mankind, with the former losing many of their fabled anthropomorphisms and the latter beginning to acknowledge, and focus on its own physicality. Responding to the often reductively conciliatory readings of studies of Shakespeare's imagery conducted by the New Critics, this essay analyses the various ways in which the imagery in King Lear reflects and develops different facets of this twilight zone between humanity and the animal kingdom. It shows how the text employs animal imagery both pejoratively to illustrate depravity and degeneracy, and affirmatively to indicate pastoral visions of placation, withdrawal and escape.
In NTQ 4 (1985) we included a fully-illustrated interview with the German director Peter Zadek co... more In NTQ 4 (1985) we included a fully-illustrated interview with the German director Peter Zadek conducted by Roy Kift. Here, Andreas Höfele explores one of the subjects touched on in that interview, as in most responses to Zadek's work: the utilization of the erotic as a recurring motif. From his introduction to London of the then little-known work of Jean Genet to his most recent productions – of Wedekind's Lulu and of Chekhov's Ivanov – Zadek has, in Höfele”s words, opted for ‘the kaleidoscopic uncertainty of play’ and a ‘deliberate lack of closure’, which are here analyzed in terms of Baudrillard's ‘structure of seduction’ employed both as aesthetic principle and as working method. Andreas Höfele, who has taught in the German Department of Edinburgh University and in the English Department at Würzburg, has been Professor of Theaterwissenschaft at the University of Munich since 1986. Apart from four novels, and books on Shakespeare's stagecraft and Malcolm Lowry...
Religious pluralization entails not just the various ways in which the historical processes of pl... more Religious pluralization entails not just the various ways in which the historical processes of pluralization were reflcted in cultural artifacts, but also, crucially, the cultural work that spawned these processes. Reflecting, driving, shaping and subverting religious systems, representation becomes a divisive force in Reformation Europe as religious pluralization erupts in a contest over how to conceive, to symbolize and to perform religious belief.
European Studies: A Journal of European Culture, …, 2001
... According to The Times 'Friday night's Millen-nium Dome show bore all the hallmarks... more ... According to The Times 'Friday night's Millen-nium Dome show bore all the hallmarks of having been processed through the Blair blandness machine ... at least, is the promise the site extends to its well over half a million visitors per year,7 the magical aura carefully sustained ...
... A Theater of Exhaustion? "Posthistoire" in Recent German Shakespeare Productions AN... more ... A Theater of Exhaustion? "Posthistoire" in Recent German Shakespeare Productions ANDREAS HOFELE The "posthistoire" idea is now new. ... 6 Norbert Bolz, "Die Zeit des Weltspiels," Asthetik und Kommunikation, 17 (1986), 115. 7 Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1979. 8 Cf. ...
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