Shakespeare in Almagro 2014: Hambret

CFP SEDERI #27 Submit your paper by Nov. 15 2016 See file for detail

Sederi, 2019

Women who choose death on Shakespeare’s stage often overturn ideas about tragedy as well as challenge the politics which establish which lives are worth sacrificing and which ones are not. Radically altering the relation between bios and zoe, female suicides collapse the divisions between things that grow, breathe, and love, and those things that block such living. In this essay, I draw on thinking about biopolitics along with feminist readings of Shakespeare in order to explore how characters like Goneril, Gertrude, and Juliet refuse the rules which determine how women’s blood must flow or be shed.

In the years 1622-1623, at the climax of the negotiations for the Spanish-Match, King James enforced censorship on any works critical of his diplomatic policy and promoted the publication of texts that sided with his views on international relations, even though such writings may have sometimes gone beyond the propagandistic aims expected by the monarch. This is the case of Michael Du Val’s The Spanish-English Rose (1622), a political tract elaborated within court circles to promote the Anglo-Spanish alliance. This article analyzes its role in producing an alternative to the religious and imperial discourse inherited from the Elizabethan age. It also considers the intertextual relations between Du Val’s tract and other contemporary works in order to determine its part within the discursive network of the Anglican faith and political absolutism. The reasons why it may have exerted a negative influence on both the English and Spanish royal households are explored as well.

This paper presents a study on spelling standardisation in Shakespeare’s first editions. Though certainly not central in literature, in which the orthography of Shakespeare’s texts has been considered mainly as an authorial and chronological test or as a tool for textual or phonological reconstruction, this issue deserves attention. An appraisal of the degree of spelling standardisation in Shakespeare’s first editions, which we know incomplete, may (i) contribute to a description of the standardisation of the English spelling system, generally allocated to the Early Modern period but still presenting important lacunae; (ii) provide a better knowledge of the spelling habits and variation patterns in Shakespeare's first editions, thereby lessening the difficulties involved in the use of digital versions of those texts; (iii) supply a background against which to appraise the alleged manipulation of spelling for stylistic purposes in the Renaissance period, namely the use of visual rhymes and of spelling variants. Assuming standardisation as a trend towards uniformity, this analysis concentrates on two different Renaissance editions of Romeo and Juliet and identifies a significant degree of orthographic regularity in the corpus considered, thus contradicting expectations raised by most references so far.

The question of Senecan influence on Elizabethan tragedy has been fiercely debated since J.W. Cunliffe published his seminal study in 1893. In the last half-century massive critical attention to this problem has been renewed. Recent interpretations of Senecan influence vary enormously, but there continues to be a tacit convergence on the view established by Cunliffe, namely that influence must be understood as a matter of local motif borrowing. This view is underpinned by the assumption that Senecan drama is made up of loosely related rhetorical exercises and that it thus lacks any coherent tragic vision. Building on recent wo rk that challenges this bias against the plays as plays, this article re-examines the function of the Chorus in Seneca in order to transcend its interpretation as a static appendage of Stoic commonplaces. Rather than interrupting the flow of the action, the Senecan Chorus is carefully designed to evolve with the former so that it generates an overwhelming tragic climax. This climax is that of the avenger’s furor, understood as tragic solipsism. It is this evolving Chorus and its vengeful madness that Kyd assimilated into his pioneering play of the 1580s.

Shakespeare criticism in Spain began in 1764 and has been on the increase ever since. The main source of information on the subject has long been the tremendous work done by Alfonso Par from the beginning of the 20th century until his death in 1936: without his Shakespeare en la literatura española (1935) none of the later studies could have been written, or at least they would have taken a good deal longer to write. On the other hand, Par’s book includes gaps and errors which need to be corrected. Among these are three cases of supposedly original texts which have turned out to be appropriations of foreign originals whose sources were not acknowledged. This article sets out to analyze these cases, examine their critical implications and thus contribute to a better knowledge and understanding of the Spanish reception of Shakespeare.

Sederi, 2017

This article explores how certain dramatists in early modern England and in Spain, specifically Ben Jonson and Miguel de Cervantes (with much more emphasis on the former), pursued authority over texts by claiming as their own a new realm which had not been available—or, more accurately, as prominently available—to playwrights before: the stage directions in printed plays. The way both these playwrights and/or their publishers dealt with the transcription of stage directions provides perhaps the clearest example of a theatrical convention translated into the realm of readership.

Renaissance England was a time when “voices” of most varied kinds intermingled, creating diffuse perceptions of ideologies. “High” and “low” cultures merged and/or changed place, as the advent of capitalism brought with it mobility that blurred socially hierarchical boundaries. As seen by Peter Burke, culture moved both ways, migrating either from the country, with its traditional culture, to the city, with its courtly and/or urban pastimes, or vice-versa. Thus court entertainments such as plays and masques, and political spectacles such as pageants and royal progresses – which both reinforced the splendour and power of the monarch and his/her court, and permitted some sort of participation of the crowd, offering the common people opportunity to enjoy more sophisticated cultural expressions – were nurtured by and simultaneously nurtured folklore and rural festivities. In the same way, popular pastimes that resulted from urban assimilations of both court and country entertainments, due to the rise of capital and the new middle class, appropriated and re-enacted such entertainments as part of their ideology. This article deals with such exchange between “high” and “low” cultural expressions, exploring them and discussing how and wher e they are exchanged as transformations take place, enhancing forms of carnivalized art such as theatre, élite and popular literature, dances and games.

This paper considers John Florio’s famous translation of Montaigne’s Essays as a source of invaluable insight into the Elizabethan practice and theory of translation. In the letter addressed to the reader, Florio strongly advocates the use of translation as a means of advancing knowledge and developing the language and culture of a nation. Echoing the Elizabethan debate between the defenders and detractors of translation, his preface provides precious information on the various Elizabethan understandings of the role of translation. Casting himself in the role of a “foster-father”, Florio foregrounds the idea of translation as rewriting of the original text into a new creation. While most scholars have emphasised solely Florio’s augmentation of Montaigne’s text and his fondness for addition, paraphrase and alliteration, the present paper intends to demonstrate that this dimension of his translation is frequently complemented by Florio’s tendency to render the text closely, even word for word at times.

In 1977, A.C. Kelly completed the supposedly unfinished investigation that D.J. Gordon proposed in his 1943 study on the Masque of Blackness. The unresolved mysteries of the masque, its 'highly recondite' symbolism was left unexplained by the latter, who concluded that 'the scheme is thus a highly recondite one, and there is much in it which awaits fuller explanation. [GORDON: 127] By placing emphasis on the light symbolism, Gordon encourages prospective criticism to rely on this theme 'as the key to its concerns and to its resolution.' [KELLY: 341] Water, the twin element that complements the emblem of the masque --and that has been apparently neglected in critical approaches so far--, becomes the central topic in Kelly's paper which, in order to clarify the enigmatic questions the masque elicits, demonstrates how both the water and light imagery interact [341]. She insists on the importance of water as a solution to the two main challenges to decorum raised by the performance: 1) maintaining the elevation of the court within the action and 2) translating them (masquers) to white again afterwards --in a second masque, The Masque of Beauty.' [KELLY: 343] Focusing on the water imagery, she shows the inherent independence of Blackness. In so doing, Kelly glosses over an emblem to elucidate the paradoxical meaning of the masque. Although she quotes Whitney's A Choice of Emblems as the source of the proverb 'It is as impossible as washing a black man white,[353]' Alciato's emblem No. LIX appears to be the more direct and accurate background for this iconological elaboration.