Panel 31: Shakespeare and Architecture

What does Shakespeare’s works tell us about his response to a central element of the cultural movement we traditionally term the Renaissance, architecture, and its extension in urbanism? Did the evident cultural changes seen in buildings and urban landscapes find a corresponding response in poetry and drama, apart from the invention of the perspectival stage around 1590? How is architecture manifested in metaphorical speech, and how is it, if at all, reflected in the composition of the plays and the moral choices they offer?

These are some of the issues raised in this panel.

Like other scripted texts Shakespeare’s plays belong in socio-economic and cultural spaces that follow laws of causality and logic of their own, and that contribute to shaping their plots. They are embedded in larger and different contexts and discourses, operating in arenas that are continually subjected to change in the form of colonization and invasion, and the resistance to change. A city and a play are such comprehensive texts that are subjected to continual flux.

Prospective panellists are asked to submit proposals of up to 500 words, accompanied by a short biography, to Roy Eriksen [->roy.eriksen@uia.no] by October 15, 2013.

Shakespeare 450 : appels à contribution [CLOS]

Vous pouvez également chercher des appels en cliquant sur le mot-clé sur le menu de droite: “Appels à contribution”.

Séminaires

  1. Séminaire 1: Shakespeare on Screen: The Romances (Sarah Hatchuel et Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, France)
  2. Séminaire 2: Biology through Shakespeare (Rachel Rodman, Durham, NC)
  3. Séminaire 3: The Many Lives of William Shakespeare: Collaboration, Biography and Authorship (Paola Pugliatti et William Leahy, Italie-Royaume Uni)
  4. Séminaire 4: Early Shakespeare (Rory Loughnane and Andrew J. Power, Etats-Unis)
  5. Séminaire 5: Shakespeare and the Visual Arts (Michele Marrapodi, Italie)
  6. Séminaire 6: Global Shakespeare as Methodology (Alexander Huang, Etats-Unis)
  7. Séminaire 7: ‘In this distracted globe’?: Cognitive Shakespeare (A. Müller-Wood et S. Baumbach, Germany)
  8. Séminaire 8: La fabrique du personnage shakespearien (Delphine Lemonnier-Texier, France)
  9. Séminaire 9: Legal Perspectives on Shakespearean Theatre (Daniela Carpi et J. Gaakeer, Italie-Pays Bas)
  10. Séminaire 10: Shakespeare and Slavic / East and Central European Countries (Michelle Assay, France-Royaume-Uni)
  11. Séminaire 11: (Ré)écrire la tragédie shakespearienne sur la scène contemporaine occidentale (Catherine Treilhou-Balaudé et Florence March, France)
  12. Séminaire 12: ‘Green’ or Ecocritical Shakespeare: non- human nature as a character in his plays (Malvina Isabel Aparicio, Argentine)
  13. Séminaire 13: The Shakespeare Circle (Stanley Wells et Paul Edmondson, Royaume-Uni)
  14. Séminaire 14: ‘Many straunge and horrible events’ – Omens and Prophecies in Histories and Tragedies by Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (Imke Lichterfeld et Yan Brailowsky, Allemagne-France)
  15. Séminaire 15: Shakespeare in French Film/France in Shakespearean Film (Melissa Croteau et Doug Lanier, Etats-Unis)
  16. Séminaire 16: The Celebrated Shakespeare: public commemoration and biography (Michael Dobson, Royaume-Uni)
  17. Séminaire 17: Religion and paganism in Shakespeare’s plays (Eric Harber, Royaume-Uni-Afrique du Sud)
  18. Séminaire 18: Shakespeare: The Authorship and the Dating Question: Apocrypha and the Case of All’s Well (Daniela Guardamagna et Rosy Colombo, Italie)
  19. Séminaire 19: Shakespeare and Global Girlhood (Ariane M. Balizet et Marcela Kostihová, Etats-Unis)
  20. Séminaire 20: ‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together’: The Nature of Problem in Shakespearean Studies (Jonathan Hart et Seda Çağlayan Mazanoğlu, Canada-Turquie)
  21. Séminaire 21: Shakespearean Festivals in the 21st Century (Paul Prescott and Nicoleta Cinpoes, Royaume-Uni)

Panels

  1. Panel 1: Shakespeare in Brazilian Popular Culture (Aimara da Cunha Resende, Brésil)
  2. Panel 2: Shakespeare and Science (Sophie Chiari and Mickael Popelard, France)
  3. Panel 3: Shakespeare Jubilees on three Continents (Christa Jansohn, Allemagne)
  4. Panel 4: Secular Shakespeares (Edward Simon, Etats-Unis)
  5. Panel 5: Born before and after Shakespeare (Anne-Valérie Dulac et Laetitia Sansonetti, France)
  6. Panel 6: Shakespearean mystifications (Davide Del Bello, Italie)
  7. Panel 7: Telling Tales of / from Shakespeare: Indian Ishtyle (P. Trivedi et S. Chaudhury, Inde)
  8. Panel 8: Shakespeare and ‘th’intertrafique’ of French and English Texts and Manners (Dympna Callaghan, M. Tudeau-Clayton, Lukas Erne, Indira Ghose, Etats-Unis-Suisse)
  9. Panel 9: Bakhtinian Forays into Shakespeare: Word, Gestures, Space (Carla Dente, Martin Procházka, Pavel Drábek, Italie-Rép. tchèque-Royaume-Uni)
  10. Panel 10: Shakespeare and Natural History (Christopher Leslie, Etats-Unis)
  11. Panel 11: ‘The Undiscovered Country – the Future’ – Shakespeare in Science Fiction (Simone Broders, Allemagne)
  12. Panel 12: Crossroads: 21st century perspectives on Shakespeare’s Classical Mythology (Agnès Lafont et Atsuhiko Hirota, France-Japon)
  13. Panel 13: Popular Shakespeares in East Asia: Local and Global Dissemination (Yilin Chen et Ryuta Minami, Taîwan-Japon)
  14. Panel 14: Shakespeare and Levinas: Dialogue between a Playwright and a Philosopher (Sean Lawrence et James Knapp, Canada-Etats-Unis)
  15. Panel 15: Celebrating Shakespeare: Commemoration and Cultural Memory (Clara Calvo et Coppélia Kahn, Espagne-Etats-Unis)
  16. Panel 16: “It’s Shakespearian!”: The critical fortune of a commonplace in France from 1820 to the present (Gisèle Venet et Line Cottegnies, France)
  17. Panel 17: Shakespeare and the Popular Culture within/Beyond the Asian Identities (Kang Kim, Corée du Sud)
  18. Panel 18: ‘Seeing As’: Shakespeare and Denotement (Michael Hattaway, Royaume-Uni)
  19. Panel 19: ‘This Earth’ (Ruth Morse, France)
  20. Panel 20: Moving Shakespeare: Approaches in Choreographing Shakespeare (Marisa C. Hayes, Royaume-Uni-France)
  21. Panel 21: Diplomacy, International Relations and The Bard in the Pre- and Post-Westphalian Worlds (Nathalie Rivere de Carles, France)
  22. Panel 22: Shakespeare and Marlowe (Lisa Hopkins, UK)
  23. Panel 23: Shakespeare, Satire and ‘Inn Jokes’ (Jacqueline Watson, Royaume-Uni)
  24. Panel 24: Shakespeare’s World in 1916 (Gordon McMullan, Royaume-Uni)
  25. Panel 25: Shakespeare et les romans hispano-américains (Cécile Brochard, France)
  26. Panel 26: Shakespeare in French Theory (Richard Wilson, Royaume-Uni)
  27. Panel 27: Speaking ‘but in the figures and comparisons of it’? Figurative speech made literal in Shakespeare’s drama / page and stage (Denis Lagae-Devoldère et Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise, France)
  28. Panel 28: Shakespearean festivals and anniversaries in Cold War Europe 1947-1988 (Erica Sheen et Isabel Karremann, Royaume Uni-Allemagne)
  29. Panel 29: The ends of means of knowing in Shakespeare and his world (Subha Mukherji, UK)
  30. Panel 30: Shakespeare et le roman (Marie Dollé, France)
  31. Panel 31: Shakespeare and architecture (Roy Eriksen, Norway)

Ateliers

  1. Atelier 1: NA.
  2. Atelier 2: “So Rare a Wonder’d Father”: the Cult of Shakespeare and the Father Figure (S. Bassi, R. Coronato, L. Tosi, D. Lagae-Devoldère, Italie-France)
  3. Atelier 3: Textual and verse analysis in relation to performance : a workshop to read Shakespeare from the performer’s viewpoint (Colin David Reese, Royaume-Uni)
  4. Atelier 4: Shakespeare Theatre Needs Francophone Actors (Christine Farenc, France)

Shakespeare 450 : calls for papers [CLOSED]

You may also search for CFPs by clicking on the keyword in the right-hand menu: “Call for papers”.

Important note:
Individuals who wish to submit a proposal must send it to the address provided in the CFP (please take into account the deadline provided in the CFP). We will not forward proposals.
Seminar, panel and workshop leaders who wish to post their CFPs on this website can send the information to: [->cfp@shakespeareanniversary.org]. The information will be posted online within 24h.

Seminars

  1. Seminar 1: Shakespeare on Screen: The Romances (Sarah Hatchuel and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, France)
  2. Seminar 2: Biology through Shakespeare (Rachel Rodman, Durham, NC)
  3. Seminar 3: The Many Lives of William Shakespeare: Collaboration, Biography and Authorship (Paola Pugliatti and William Leahy, Italy-UK)
  4. Seminar 4: Early Shakespeare (Rory Loughnane and Andrew J. Power, USA)
  5. Seminar 5: Shakespeare and the Visual Arts (Michele Marrapodi, Italy)
  6. Seminar 6: Global Shakespeare as Methodology (Alexander Huang, USA)
  7. Seminar 7: ‘In this distracted globe’?: Cognitive Shakespeare (A. Müller-Wood and S. Baumbach, Germany)
  8. Séminaire 8: La fabrique du personnage shakespearien (Delphine Lemonnier-Texier, France)
  9. Seminar 9: Legal Perspectives on Shakespearean Theatre (Daniela Carpi and J. Gaakeer, Italy-Netherlands)
  10. Seminar 10: Shakespeare and Slavic / East and Central European Countries (Michelle Assay and David Fanning, France-UK)
  11. Seminar 11: (Ré)écrire la tragédie shakespearienne sur la scène contemporaine occidentale (Catherine Treilhou-Balaudé and Florence March, France)
  12. Seminar 12: ‘Green’ or Ecocritical Shakespeare: non- human nature as a character in his plays (Malvina Isabel Aparicio, Argentina)
  13. Seminar 13: The Shakespeare Circle (Stanley Wells and Paul Edmondson, UK)
  14. Seminar 14: ‘Many straunge and horrible events’ – Omens and Prophecies in Histories and Tragedies by Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (Imke Lichterfeld and Yan Brailowsky, Germany-France)
  15. Seminar 15: Shakespeare in French Film/France in Shakespearean Film (Melissa Croteau and Doug Lanier, USA)
  16. Seminar 16: The Celebrated Shakespeare: public commemoration and biography (Michael Dobson, UK)
  17. Seminar 17: Religion and paganism in Shakespeare’s plays (Eric Harber, UK-South Africa)
  18. Seminar 18: Shakespeare: The Authorship and the Dating Question: Apocrypha and the Case of All’s Well (Daniela Guardamagna and Rosy Colombo, Italy)
  19. Seminar 19: Shakespeare and Global Girlhood (Ariane M. Balizet and Marcela Kostihová, USA)
  20. Seminar 20: ‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together’: The Nature of Problem in Shakespearean Studies (Jonathan Hart and Seda Çağlayan Mazanoğlu, Canada-Turkey)
  21. Seminar 21: Shakespearean Festivals in the 21st Century (Paul Prescott and Nicoleta Cinpoes, UK)

Panels

  1. Panel 1: Shakespeare in Brazilian Popular Culture (Aimara da Cunha Resende, Brazil)
  2. Panel 2: Shakespeare and Science (Sophie Chiari and Mickael Popelard, France)
  3. Panel 3: Shakespeare Jubilees on three Continents (Christa Jansohn, Germany)
  4. Panel 4: Secular Shakespeares (Edward Simon, USA)
  5. Panel 5: Born before and after Shakespeare (Anne-Valérie Dulac, Laetitia Sansonetti, France)
  6. Panel 6: Shakespearean mystifications (Davide Del Bello, Italy)
  7. Panel 7: Telling Tales of / from Shakespeare: Indian Ishtyle (P. Trivedi, S. Chaudhury, India)
  8. Panel 8: Shakespeare and ‘th’intertrafique’ of French and English Texts and Manners (Dympna Callaghan, M. Tudeau-Clayton, Lukas Erne, Indira Ghose, USA-Switzerland)
  9. Panel 9: Bakhtinian Forays into Shakespeare: Word, Gestures, Space (Carla Dente, Martin Procházka, Pavel Drábek, Italy-Czech Rep.-UK)
  10. Panel 10: Shakespeare and Natural History (Christopher Leslie, USA)
  11. Panel 11: ‘The Undiscovered Country – the Future’ – Shakespeare in Science Fiction (Simone Broders, Germany)
  12. Panel 12: Crossroads: 21st century perspectives on Shakespeare’s Classical Mythology (Agnès Lafont and Atsuhiko Hirota, France-Japan)
  13. Panel 13: Popular Shakespeares in East Asia: Local and Global Dissemination (Yilin Chen and Ryuta Minami, Taiwan-Japan)
  14. Panel 14: Shakespeare and Levinas: Dialogue between a Playwright and a Philosopher (Sean Lawrence and James Knapp, Canada-USA)
  15. Panel 15: Celebrating Shakespeare: Commemoration and Cultural Memory (Clara Calvo and Coppélia Kahn, Spain-USA)
  16. Panel 16: “It’s Shakespearian!”: The critical fortune of a commonplace in France from 1820 to the present (Gisèle Venet and Line Cottegnies, France)
  17. Panel 17: Shakespeare and the Popular Culture within/Beyond the Asian Identities (Kang Kim, S-Korea)
  18. Panel 18: ‘Seeing As’: Shakespeare and Denotement (Michael Hattaway, UK)
  19. Panel 19: ‘This Earth’ (Ruth Morse, France)
  20. Panel 20: Moving Shakespeare: Approaches in Choreographing Shakespeare (Marisa C. Hayes, UK-France)
  21. Panel 21: Diplomacy, International Relations and The Bard in the Pre- and Post-Westphalian Worlds (Nathalie Rivere de Carles, France)
  22. Panel 22: Shakespeare and Marlowe (Lisa Hopkins, UK)
  23. Panel 23: Shakespeare, Satire and ‘Inn Jokes’ (Jacqueline Watson, UK)
  24. Panel 24: Shakespeare’s World in 1916 (Gordon McMullan, UK)
  25. Panel 25: Shakespeare et les romans hispano-américains (Cécile Brochard, France)
  26. Panel 26: Shakespeare in French Theory (Richard Wilson, UK)
  27. Panel 27: Speaking ‘but in the figures and comparisons of it’? Figurative speech made literal in Shakespeare’s drama / page and stage (Denis Lagae-Devoldère and Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise, France)
  28. Panel 28: Shakespearean festivals and anniversaries in Cold War Europe 1947-1988 (Erica Sheen and Isabel Karremann, UK-Germany)
  29. Panel 29: The ends of means of knowing in Shakespeare and his world (Subha Mukherji, UK)
  30. Panel 30: Shakespeare et le roman (Marie Dollé, France)
  31. Panel 31: Shakespeare and architecture (Roy Eriksen, Norway)

Workshops

  1. Workshop 1: TBA.
  2. Workshop 2: “So Rare a Wonder’d Father”: the Cult of Shakespeare and the Father Figure (S. Bassi, R. Coronato, L. Tosi, D. Lagae-Devoldère, Italy-France)
  3. Workshop 3: Textual and verse analysis in relation to performance : a workshop to read Shakespeare from the performer’s viewpoint (Colin David Reese, UK)
  4. Atelier 4: Shakespeare Theatre Needs Francophone Actors (Christine Farenc, France)

Panel 6: Shakespearean mystifications

The notion of “mystification” has been used by critics with reference to the cultural and political dexterities of Shakespeare works. Cultural studies in particular have insisted on aspects of language and imagery in Shakespeare that alternatively work to mystify or demystify early modern (or current) assumptions. Shakespearean theatre, Shakespearean texts, and periodically even Shakespeare as a historical persona are there for us either to demystify or to appraise in view of their demystifying thrust.

Marxist-oriented readings take mystification as a “plausible misrepresentation of what is going on (process) or what is being done (praxis) in the service of the interests of one socioeconomic class (the exploiters) over or against another class (the exploited)” (Laing, Mystification, Confusion and Conflict, 1965). Yet, other far-reaching theories of mystification in literature and elsewhere exist, for instance Burke (A Rhetoric of Motives, 1969), Felperin (Shakespearean Representations, 1977), Lefebvre and Guterman (La Conscience Mystifiée, 1999), Robinson (Philosophy and Mystification: a reflection on nonsense and clarity, 2003), and recently Abramson (Learning from Lying: Paradoxes of Literary Mystification, 2006).

Current views on mystification broadly, and on literary mystification in particular, tend to highlight its heuristic potential and the interpretative freedom it promotes, behind and beyond issues of ideological compliance. Accordingly, the cultural and socio-economic upheaval scholars traditionally associate with late 16th century London (its literature, its playwrights and its theatrical politics) would seem to warrant further and wider investigation, featuring Shakespeare as an exemplary case study.

Papers are invited on any literary or cultural aspect of Shakespearean or early modern mystification. Questions may address for instance:

 Practices of mystification in early modern Europe: scopes and definitions

 Mystification and mystery: theological models and literary counterparts

 Mystification, art, and theatrical representation in Elizabethan theatre

 Mystification and the figurative use of emblems in Shakespeare

 The aesthetics of literary mystification in Shakespeare and his interpreters

 Strategies of mystification in Shakespeare’s plays and poems: characters, language, performance

 Mystification in literary rite and religious ritual: Shakespeare’s approach

 Bardolatry: literary and Ideological mystifications of the Shakespearean canon

 Mystification of authorship

 Literary and political mystification in the performance and the reception of Shakespeare’s plays

 Mystification and Shakespearean criticism: textual cruxes and political choices

 The changing faces of Shakespearean mystification in literary history

 Mystification and the perpetuation of Elizabethan knowledge

 Mystification and Reformation zeal

 Mystification and the literary uses of paradox

The format of this panel is that of a seminar. Instead of having participants present their work, (short) papers will be circulated before the conference to ensure maximum time for dialogue amongst participants. During the seminar, we will focus on discussing individual approaches.

Please send a 250-word abstract of your proposed paper by September 20th, 2013 to [->davide.del-bello@unibg.it] stating your name, email address, and affiliation.

Seminar 17: Religion and paganism in Shakespeare’s plays

This seminar seeks papers on Shakespeare’s reactions to the various shades of Protestantism, show the influence of recusant Catholicism and consider the perspective offered by paganism, notably through the numerous myths found in the Shakespearean canon.

Arguably, Shakespeare used alternative narratives of a quasi-religious nature not so much to subvert the established religious rituals of his time (whether Protestant or Catholic) as to enlarge and blend into them. To this end he presents and parodies the odos chameliontos, the chameleon virtuosity of the (magical) theatre.

Topics will discuss the influence of religion on Shakespeare, its links with paganism, and the workings of myth in (dramatic) poetry.

Please send proposals by September 15, 2013 to [->harber.eric@gmail.com]. Proposals must include :

 name, email and affiliation.

 title of paper.

 300-word abstract.

Seminar 16: The Celebrated Shakespeare: public commemoration and biography

This seminar welcomes short papers (up to 3,000 words) on the ways in which festivals, anniversaries and other public celebrations of Shakespeare’s achievements have required or prompted particular accounts of who Shakespeare was. Which versions of Mr William Shakespeare have great civic and international occasions preferred? Have these periodic attempts to interest a larger public in Shakespeare been valuable stimulants to the study of his life, or regrettable fountains of hearsay?

Papers might consider:

 the representation of Shakespeare in particular genres associated with anniversaries (odes, pageants, press releases);

 what might be learned from the comparative study of the Shakespeares promulgated in different times and places;

 what might be learned from comparative studies which set these public accounts of William Shakespeare alongside the biographical element in comparable celebrations of the likes of Molière, Cervantes, Dante, etc;

 whether the Shakespeare advanced as a focus for collective celebration is always a conservative figure or whether there have been more progressive interventions by Shakespearean biography into the realm of public life.

Please send proposals to [->m.dobson@bham.ac.uk] by September 15, 2013 and include:

 Name, email and affiliation

 Title of proposal

 300-word abstract.

Seminar 15: Shakespeare in French Film/France in Shakespearean Film

France has a complex and unique relationship with Shakespeare. Despite the nation’s close proximity and historical ties to Britain, French literary artists and philosophers of the Renaissance and Enlightenment eras generally thought Shakespeare too uncouth and indecorous to be included in the rolls of the greatest dramatists, such as Molière and Corneille. It was the French Romantics of the nineteenth century who embraced Shakespeare and ushered in the popularity of Shakespeare on stage in France, in the same century the film industry was being born in Paris. This seminar will explore the many ways in which Shakespeare’s work has influenced French cinema and has been adapted to the screen in France, from the silent era to the present, including offshoots and films which use Shakespeare’s works as significant intertexts, from Les enfants du paradis (Marcel Carné, 1945) to L’Appartement (Gilles Mimouni, 1996). Conversely, the seminar also will invite papers that consider how the nation, people, and culture of France have been depicted in Shakespearean films. The term Shakespearean films here includes all kinds of cinematic and television adaptations of the plays as well as offshoots (or spinoffs) that use the Bard’s work for sundry purposes and agendas.

This subject invites reflection on the traditions and methods of “reading” and presenting Shakespeare in France. For instance, one might examine Sarah Bernhardt’s famed stage performance in the role of Hamlet in 1899 and the filming of Bernhardt’s Hamlet-Laertes duel scene in 1900, reputedly the first time any part of Hamlet was recorded for the screen. The relationship between French Shakespearean stage actors, like Bernhardt, and their non-Shakespeare on-screen roles could be explored. More recently, the casting of Sophie Marceau in Hoffman’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999) or the cameo appearance of Gérard Depardieu in Branagh’s Hamlet might warrant analysis of how the French identity of actors is used in English-language adaptations. In addition, the many cinematic adaptations of Henry V offer fertile ground for investigating how the French are represented in Shakespeare’s work and are then translated into film at pivotal historical moments, such as Sir Laurence Olivier’s Henry V, which was filmed during World War II and features a mise-en-scène derived self-consciously from the Duc de Berry’s medieval Book of Hours. Or one might explore how explicitly French settings in some of Shakespeare plays—Love’s Labour’s Lost and All’s Well That Ends Well in particular—have been handled in screen adaptations. Furthermore, one could examine the reception of cinematic Shakespeare in France, as Sarah Hatchuel has done with Kenneth Branagh’s work. The place of Shakespeare in French cinema and the place of France in Shakespearean cinema also has been investigated in the work of Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin and Patricia Dorval, who have been pioneering a website that catalogues and analyzes Shakespearean allusions in French film. Last but not least, one might examine the kinds of cultural work done by Shakespeare references, explicit and implicit, in particular French films, in certain film genres in France, at certain periods in French cinema, or in the oeuvre of a French director. To what audiences are such references directed? How are such references understood within a French cultural context? How do such references (re)conceptualize the nature and influence of Shakespeare’s work? To what extent can one speak of a distinctively French approach to adapting Shakespeare to the screen?

Seminar Structure: This seminar will include up to twenty members, and seminar papers should be 3,000 to 4,000 words in length. Members will read all the seminar papers but will respond in detail via email to three other papers before the seminar meets.

Submissions should be sent by email to ->mcroteau@calbaptist.edu] AND [.
Please include the following with your proposal:

  • the full title of your paper;
  • a 250-400 word description of your paper;
  • your name, postal address and e-mail address;
  • your institutional affiliation and position;
  • a short bionote;
  • AV requirements (if any).

Deadline for proposals: 10 September 2013

Workshop 2: “So Rare a Wonder’d Father”: the Cult of Shakespeare and the Father Figure

Is Bardolatry unconsciously constructed on the father figure? A large bulk of criticism has helpfully chalked up the rise of Bardolatry to the attendant shifts in literary taste as well as the concomitant social and historical frameworks. In fact, a novel emphasis ought to be put on the shifting symbolic connotations of the gradual idealization of Shakespeare as the father first of the English-speaking world and then of the Western civilization. Since the dawn of Bardolatry in the 1730s-1740s, the discourse on Shakespeare has often trodden on the latent ground of fatherhood, sublimated as a model of literary authority. It is our contention that fatherhood in its subsequent modern embodiments informs the historically and ideologically varied models of literary authority underlying the different stages of Bardolatry.

The cult of Shakespeare’s literary fatherhood seems to have progressed through four stages: the Literary Father, the Divine Father, the English Father, the Oedipal Father. The Literary Father was the first and most natural embodiment of the idea. Arguably, the first emergence of Shakespeare’s fatherhood was aptly donned in the Hamletic garb of the fatherly revenant, as in Charles Gildon’s 1699 Beauty the Best Advocate, whose epilogue has Shakespeare’s ghost berate the constant revisions of his work. In a process running under trace from the Restoration to mid-eighteenth century, Shakespeare as the Literary Father is gradually assimilated to the figure of the Divine Father. Dryden claims that Shakespeare “created the stage among us”; Philippe Le Tourneur, the author of the 1776 French translation, explicitly calls him “le dieu créateur de l’art sublime du théâtre”. The Romantic emphasis on the Shakespearean sublime, the peak pictured by Lessing as der Gipfel, also works along the lines of the recognition of a superhuman father figure to be placed on the highest pedestal, “the greatest man that ever put on and put off mortality” (Coleridge). This process gains further momentum in the 19th century: Alexandre Dumas simply grants Shakespeare the status of a second God, and Ralph Waldo Emerson hails him as an unrecognised god. Shakespeare has virtually become the celestial father, “making the heaven of heavens thy dwelling place” (Matthew Arnold). And a very English Father as well, thanks to the sublimation that accompanies the Victorian rise of nationalism and presents Shakespeare as the ultimate father who imparts his benign blessing on the colonial, “civilising” enterprise. Shakespeare looms large as a sort of idealized father of the English-speaking world, in a process ranging from academia to child literature. The next and last step sees Shakespeare’s English fatherhood trascend into universal paternity as the ultimate source of influence and authority for the (Western) world: the Oedipal Father, whose paradoxical triumph in the face of the evaporation of the father figure is still palpable today in the so-called Shakespeare industry, has settled in. It is not only Freud that presents Shakespeare as the father who also explores the unconscious relationships with (and revolt against) one’s own father: more generally, “papà Shakespeare” (Verdi) gradually becomes the template for the sublime fatherhood of the creator of the human mind. Unser Shakespeare‘s fatherly figure still prospers on, undaunted if not actually enriched by the post-war demise of the English colonies and the 1968-fuelled, Lacan-tinged rebellion against the paternalist father, a revolt that is often tellingly polarized in fiction around Shakespearean fathers such as Shylock or Prospero.

This issue addresses several theoretical questions that deserve a closer scrutiny: for instance, is the notion of Shakespeare’s sublimated fatherhood related to the different conceptions of the earthly and the celestial father? Does Bardolatry merely adapt the coeval notions of earthly/celestial fatherhood, or does it powerfully open up new versions of those very social and cultural models? Is Bardolatry more poignantly expressed when the patriarchal figure (or religious faith) is at its weakest or its strongest? Can we detect any significant differences in the sublimation of Shakespeare’s authority when either a Queen or a King is sitting on the English throne? And is Shakespeare’s literary fatherhood sublimated as a male figure, an authority figure or a mixture of both?

We propose to work on this issue by setting up a workshop open to all avenues of critical theory, from traditional philology to psychoanalysis, from new historicism and gender to cultural and post-colonial studies. Our intended format includes a set of position papers followed by a roundtable discussion.

Please send a 250-word abstract of your proposed paper by 30 September 2013 to [->coronato.rocco@gmail.com] stating your name, email address and affiliation.

Seminar 14: “Many straunge and horrible events” – Omens and Prophecies in Histories and Tragedies by Shakespeare and His Contemporaries

“To make short, in this year sundry woeful, and cruel evils, together with many strange and horrible events shall sensibly appear, which shall principally molest and afflict the westward countries.”[[Richard Harvey, An Astrological Discourse upon the great and notable Conjunction of the two superiour Planets Saturne & Jupiter, which shall happen the 28 day of April, 1583. With a briefe Declaration oof the effectes, which the late Eclipse of the Sunne 1582. is yet heerafter to woorke, London, 1583, p. 33 (spelling modernised).]]

Thus wrote Richard Harvey on the rare star constellation in 1582, a planetary conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, seen as one of the most notorious omens in the late 16th century. Omens, prodigies or portents are extraordinary macrocosmic phenomena that prophesy or foreshadow coming events. They are symbols of the future and, in the Renaissance, were seen as cosmic relations: they could be signs of either the confirmation of a fixed divine order or a potentially violent threat posed by a contravening proto-apocalyptic disorder.

Statements like Harvey’s are not unknown in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. Whether the nativity to the Duchess of Malfi’s child bodes good or ill, whether the blood of English will indeed manure the ground during the Wars of the Roses, or whether the “tempest dropping fire” and other “portentous things” on the night before the Ides of March announce Caesar’s assassination, faith in omens and prophecies often had political, historical and religious implications, affording playwrights numerous dramatic opportunities. On stage, foreshadowing by omens and prophecies often alludes to a change of power, not only in histories where events may have been familiar for audiences, but also in tragedies, as a means to hint at future events in the plot.

Omens seem almost commonplace elements to transmit a knowledge of things to come, be it through symbolic images of light or darkness, planetary and astrological references, or meteorological figures of speech. Prophecies can help anticipate events, differentiate characters, determine battles, evoke misunderstandings and create dramatic suspense. Marjorie Garber speaks of “the dramatic convention that prophecies always come true”, a fact she claims was employed by playwrights.[[Marjorie Garber, “‘What’s past is prologue’: Temporality and Prophecy in Shakespeare’s History Plays”, in Renaissance Genres: Essays on Theory, History and Interpretation, ed. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Harvard UP, 1986, p. 308.]] But prophecies and omens also allow a discrepant audience awareness, a notion already introduced by Ernst Cassirer when he spoke of the symbolic function of omens to express intentions,[[Ernst Cassirer, Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance, 1927.]] and they can be used to re-interpret signs, plays and even history, “prophesying after the fact”, in the words of Kenneth Burke.[[Kenneth Burke, Kenneth Burke on Shakespeare, ed. Scott L. Newstok, Parlor Press, 2007.]]

Staging omens as visual signs in Renaissance theatre also required the support of scenery. But by means of verbal presentations of stage scenery, a skillful linguistic, dramaturgic or teichoscopic representation of omens could work like prophecies, challenging distinctions between visible and invisible, stage and audience, presenting and representing.

In this seminar, we would like to address the ambiguous, auxiliary and malleable functions of omens and prophecies in histories and tragedies by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, how they operate with source-based omens and prophecies and incorporate them in their plays; how they invent new omens and prophecies; how they choose and use characters (prophets, augurs, sybils, etc.) to utter prophecies and interpret omens; how plays exploit pagan and Christian interpretive and symbolic patterns; how royal, civic and Church authorities responded to the playwrights’ use of prophecies and omens; how the staging of prophecies and omens evolved over time.

This seminar targets the application and dramatic usage of omens and prophecies by Shakespeare and other dramatists of the early modern era: we welcome diverse methodological approaches to the topic, notably analyses based on history, anthropology, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, linguistics and performance studies. As the seminar takes place during a conference commemorating the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, proposals on prophecies and omens about Shakespeare and “Shakespearean” drama are also welcome.

Proposals should be sent to ->lichterfeld@uni-bonn.de] and [ by September 10, 2013. Please include name, email, affiliation, abstract (250 words) and title of your contribution.

Panel 17: Shakespeare and the Popular Culture within/beyond the Asian Identities

In the rapid process of globalization contemporary approaches to Shakespeare at large have been vastly diversified. Artistic creators and scholars around the world find new challenging ways to express their own cultural perspectives on a wide canvas framed by the name of Shakespeare. In Europe such endeavors to paint various colors of Shakespeare over their indigenous cultures have been incessantly made since the 1800s, initiatively with his plays being translated into the so-called major European languages such as French, German, Spanish, and even Russian. In Asia as well, Shakespeare enjoys a comparatively-short-but-very-unique history of translations and performances. Notably, recent challenges to Shakespeare in many of Asian countries seem to reflect the tendency to pull out their independent interpretations or translations of Shakespeare as a cultural capital over the western world in use of traditional art forms or aesthetics, which are taken uniquely Asian to the both eyes of Asian and non-Asian audiences.

Such recreations provide diverse levels of audiences in the area with double chances to reinterpret Shakespeare through their own perspectives while at the same time providing them a mirror with which to view their own theatrical cultural heritage. Hence, as one Japanese critic Kaori Kobayashi has once pointed out, “ironically, Shakespeare, the icon of western culture, seems to contribute to rediscovering Asian tradition or Asian identity”. Lately in such Asian countries as Taiwan, Japan, and Korea, it has been regarded quite noticeable that new tasks to recycle Shakespeare as potential ways to stand out any specific shapes of their own cultural aspects become prevailing. Undoubtedly their boundary goes far beyond the theatrical world expanding over to other commercial fields of mass media and pop culture.

Taiwan has noticed the proliferation of various styles of musical rendering of Shakespeare in which his plays are vividly rejuvenated. Japan has already positioned as an Oriental center of hybrid, “improper” or “tacky” Shakespeares. Diverse editions of Manga Shakespeare including a homosexual version came out to the market and all female Shakespeare productions hit the stages in Tokyo. In Korea comic adaptations of Shakespeare plays are on sale for the sake of children’s elite education and the plot of Hamlet was recycled for the narrative of a popular online game titled Mabinogi. Film makers from India and China zealously infused the archaic story of Shakespeare’s great tragedies with their real politik. In the Philippines colonized version of Spanish Shakespeare movies were rediscovered with reinterpretations.

Topics of this panel will include, but are not limited to, all the adaptations and recreations of Shakespeare on popular media — TV, music, film, gaming, comics, advertisements, blogs, internet sites etc. — made in mostly across the Asian countries or with at least Asian identities, or any connections with the western appropriation. This panel will particularly explore various questions concerning the ways in which Shakespeare has been commercially appropriated and circulated in the areas of popular media, and the issues of Shakespeare interacting with popular culture in Asian perspectives. The panel, consequently, will be a subjective arena to tackle with a new definition of such a controversial term “Asian Shakespeare/s” and its pertinent political and cultural discourses.

Proposals of about 250 words for a twenty-minute paper, plus a short bio should be sent to Kang Kim ([->shaksper@lycos.co.kr]) by 20th August 2013. Decision will be announced in early September.