Introduction. Shakespeare

-

Transposing Ovid’s Story of Myrrha: The Ideology of the Woman-Tree Figure in Early Modern European Visual Arts

Dans les Métamorphoses d’Ovide, Livre X, Myrrha est transformée en arbre par la volonté des dieux. Cette transmutation a bien souvent été lue comme la punition de ses amours incestueux. Dans cet essai, je m’appuierai sur quelques transpositions visuelles du mythe datant de l’époque moderne afin d’explorer la manière dont ces représentations présentent un lien avec la perception et/ou l’édification de la femme et de ses désirs sexuels. Cet article met ainsi en avant les différentes voies par lesquelles les artistes désignés ont associé l’humain et le végétal dans leur figuration du corps féminin métamorphosé. Comment le ‘signifié’ de la femme transformée en végétal se fait-il alors le miroir des conceptions du corps de la femme à l’époque moderne ? Le degré ou le statut de la métamorphose, la précision des détails (à propos du paysage et des personnages) se lisent comme le locus de leur vision de la féminité et trahissent leur parti pris culturels et idéologiques. Cette analyse révèle en outre le rôle d’éléments subversifs qui, même lorsqu’ils ne se défont pas de l’idéologie dominante, perturbent cette dernière autant que la trame narrative classique du châtiment de Myrrha, et introduisent la métamorphose comme la réalisation d’une idée de justice autre.In this essay I look at some early modern European visual transpositions of Ovid’s rendition of the myth of Myrrha in Metamorphoses, Book X. As Myrrha was turned into a tree by the gods, and because the metamorphosis has mainly been read as the punishment for the realisation of her incestuous love, the visual representations may be linked to the perception and/or constructions of woman and her sexual desire. I focus on the different ways in which the selected artists combined the human and the vegetal in representing the female metamorphosing body, to ask: how does the ‘signifier’ of the woman-turning-into-vegetal relate to the early modern cultural constructions of the female body? The degree or stage of the metamorphosis, the specific details (e.g. about landscape and characters) are read as the locus of their constructions of femininity and of their cultural and ideological biases; the analyses reveal that they are also, sometimes, the place of subversive elements, which, even when they do not break free of the dominant ideology, disrupt it just as they disrupt the sin-punishment narrative of the story of Myrrha, and present the metamorphosis as the realisation of a different idea of justice

"Attraversamenti": Il linguaggio della teoria postcoloniale

Il saggio offre una disamina del linguaggio della teoria postcoloniale e discute alcuni nodi concettuali che sono centrali alla teoria stessa – mimicry, terzo spazio, traduzione (letterale e metaforica) e altri. Esso attraversa il dibattito critico fino ai suoi sviluppi più recenti, soffermandosi sulle voci più significative, da Stuart Hall a Benita Parry, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak e altri

Poetry Death Match, directed by Giorgio Sangati for Teatro Stabile del Veneto

L'intervento offre una riflessione, a partire da alcuni esempi, su forme di sopravvivenza del teatro shakespeareano in tempi di lockdown.A contribution on Shakespeare under lockdown

Bookscapes through Microhistory : Looking for the (Un)common Reader in Early Modern England

Cet article propose une réflexion sur ce que la microhistoire comme perspective critique, dans l’acception et la pratique de Carlo Ginzburg, peut apporter à une histoire du livre qui prenne en compte le lecteur, et considère l’étude d’événements uniques comme essentielle à la compréhension de la culture et des idées à des époques données. Cet essai propose une enquête sur l’histoire du livre qui, inspirée par la microhistoire et étayée par des archives, s’efforce de repérer dans la première modernité des lecteurs “inhabituels” qui, en raison des itinéraires insolites empruntés par certains objets-livres, ont pu “rencontrer” des textes dont ils n’auraient autrement pas croisé la route. Quelles put être leur interprétation de ces textes ? Ont-ils, ou d’autres à leur place, laissé des témoignages écrits de ces lectures “exceptionnelles” ? Etque pourraient apporter ces témoignages, s’ils étaient mis au jour, à notre connaissance de la première modernité ?This essay is an investigation into book history, inspired by microhistory and supported by archival research. It offers a reflection on what microhistory, in Carlo Ginzburg’s acceptation and practice, can contribute to a history of the book that wishes to keep the reader in the picture and considers the study of unique events as central to an understanding of culture and ideas at any given time. It traces “uncommon” readers in early modernity – readers who, in view of the unexpected ways in which book-objects circulated, may have chanced upon and encountered texts otherwise considered out of their reach. How did they respond to them? Did they, or others in their stead, leave records of “uncommon” readings? What could such records contribute to our knowledge of early modernity

Tragedy and Shakespeare Performance Studies in Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio’s Giulio Cesare (1997) and Macbeth su Macbeth (2014)

The article discusses two productions, respectively of Julius Caesar and Macbeth, by the experimental Italian theatre company Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio (SRS). My wider scope is a reflection on what I may call the ‘peregrinations’ of the sense of the tragic in our times; my more specific question is: How is the Shakespearean tragic envisioned by SRS? What does their ‘performative thinking’ reveal about tragedy and our sense of the tragic today? As the performances are in Italian, based on Italian translations of Shakespeare, the question of the different language will also be briefly considered, to listen to the ‘ear of the other’ in critical action

Happiness in Cultural Diversity: Mina Shum’s Two Films About Chinese Canada

Mina Shum’s two films, 'Double Happiness' and 'Long Life, Happiness, and Prosperity', take up happiness as the horizon of life in their comedic depiction of the Chinese community in Canada. The life of the immigrant is a life in-between. How can its suspended condition be represented? The article analyses the ways in which genre and the self-reflexive, at times experimental use of the cinematic language are combined in Shum’s two films to represent the Chinese immigrant’s life in urban Canada, and it also discusses the cultural implications of Shum's cinematic representation. Drawing on film studies as well as cultural studies, the article investigates the removal of tragedy from the storytelling, the comedic representation of stereotypes of the Chinese immigrant, and some poetical inventions that figure the “here and now” of Canadian Chinese life as a ‘breach’ or “crack in all there is”