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.