Shakespeare and media ecology: beyond historicism and presentism

This article proposes media ecology-a combination of media studies and performance studies with literary and cultural history-as a research perspective for Shakespeare studies. In contrast to a hermeneutics of renewal-as evinced in both New Historicism and what has been called presentism-media ecology combines a sense of historical alterity with an awareness of the continuing transformations of Shakespeare in changing media settings: from manuscripts and printed texts to theatrical performances, music, opera, cinema, and new media. As an example, the article focuses on the masque in The Tempest, which poses obvious difficulties for a hermeneutics of renewal and is often cut from performance. Productions and adaptations frequently extend the spectacular qualities of the masque to The Tempest as a whole and ignore the skepticism about theatrical illusion that is voiced by Prospero in the play. In the case of The Tempest, cultural productions ranging from theatrical performances to the closing ceremony of the London Olympics of 20 12 are difficult to conceptualize in the framework of adaptation studies (which relies on the precedence of an original over its derivations). The article argues that media ecology can help scholars map out such connections and differences between performances and cultural phenomena relating to Shakespeare as cannot be fully grasped either in a historicist or presentist perspective

Cultural ecology and Chinese Hamlets

This essay examines the critical potential of cultural ecology and cultural mobility studies for modeling the relations between literature and culture. It investigates the mobility and portability of literary effects across different media, periods, and cultural and geographical spaces. It intends to offer a glimpse of what a continentally informed view of cultural ecology can contribute to the understanding of literary history as a cultural history of media effects. With a view to the twofold promise of cultural ecology, it hopes to accommodate both the historical singularity of literary objects (mostly, but not exclusively, texts) and their multifarious continuations in other media configurations. As a paradigmatic example, it explores the global cultural mobility of Shakespeare. Using the example of the adaptation of Hamlet in recent Chinese films, the essay demonstrates how literary effects circulate in different media contexts across temporal and spatial distances, beyond the range of traditional literary history. In the larger framework of cultural mobility studies, these suggestions also attempt to overstep the self-imposed generic limits of current world literature studies and to find an alternative to their methodological problems

A Short Media History of English Literature

This book explores the history of literature as a history of changing media and modes of communication, from manuscript to print, from the codex to the computer, and from paper to digital platforms. It argues that literature has evolved, and continues to evolve, in sync with material forms and formats that engage our senses in multiple ways. Because literary experiences are embedded in, and enabled by, media, the book focuses on literature as a changing combination of material and immaterial features. The principal agents of this history are no longer genres, authors, and texts but configurations of media and technologies. In telling the story of these combinations from prehistory to the present, Ingo Berensmeyer distinguishes between three successive dominants of media usage that have shaped literary history: performance, representation, and connection. Using English literature as a test case for a long view of media history, this book combines an unusual bird’s eye view across periods with illuminating readings of key texts. It will prove an invaluable resource for teaching and for independent study in English or comparative literature and media studies

Authorship as cultural performance: new perspectives in authorship studies

This article proposes a performative model of authorship, based on the historical alternation between predominantly 'weak' and 'strong' author concepts and related practices of writing, publication and reading. Based on this model, we give a brief overview of the historical development of such author concepts in English literature from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. We argue for a more holistic approach to authorship within a cultural topography, comprising social contexts, technological and media factors, and other cultural developments, such as the distinction between privacy and the public sphere

A Short Media History of English Literature

This book explores the history of literature as a history of changing media and modes of communication from prehistory to the present. It argues that literature has evolved, and continues to evolve, in sync with material forms and formats that engage our senses in multiple ways. In telling the story of these connections, it combines an unusual bird’s eye view across periods with illuminating readings of texts from (mostly) English literature

Introduction: Reconfiguring Authorship

Introduction to the fifth issue of Authorship