Schedule / Horaire
Panel A: Saturday 26 April 2014, 9h-10h30.
Panel B: Saturday 26 April 2014, 11h-12h30.
Room: V115/V116.
Leader / Organisateur
Christopher Leslie, Polytechnic School of Engineering at New York University (USA)
Participants
Panel A
- Justin Kolb, American University in Cairo (Egypt)
“The Dissolution of the Engine of this World”: The decay of nature and the Anthropocene in the history plays - Felix Sprang, University of Hamburg (Germany)
“What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?” Shakespeare’s Animals – a Class of Their Own. - Martin Hyatt, Ph.D., independent scholar
Shakespeare and Birds - Jarosław Włodarczyk, Polish Academy of Sciences and Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin
and Zuzanna Czerniak, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin (Poland)
Astronomical Fragments in Shakespeare and Modern History of Astronomy
Panel B
- Christopher Leslie, Polytechnic School of Engineering at New York University (USA)
Specters of Unnatural History in Macbeth - Marianne Kimura, Yamaguchi Prefectural College (Japan)
Hamlet as a Cosmic Allegory about Solar Energy - Shu-hua Chung, Tung Fang Design Institute (Taiwan)
Nature in The Tempest - Neslihan Ekmekçioğlu, Hacettepe University and Bilkent University (Turkey)
The Tempest in Prospero’s Mind and in Outer Space, Reflecting the Creative Imagination of the Artist and the Natural History of the Time
Abstracts / Résumés
1. Justin Kolb, American University in Cairo (Egypt)
“The Dissolution of the Engine of this World”: The decay of nature and the Anthropocene in the history plays
In 1580, the largest earthquake in British history was recorded and a comet ignited the sky. These sparked a rash of pamphlets, including Francis Shakelton’s Blazing Star, which warns of “dissolution of the Engine of this World.” This paper focuses on Richard II’s repeated invocations of an organic commonwealth of man and nature. The play sees humanity estranged from nature, bracketed off from a nature it acts upon. Drawing on theorists like Bruno Latour, Michel Serres, and Jane Bennett, this paper examines the roots of this historical narrative and its effects in literary study, science, and ecology.
2. Felix Sprang, University of Hamburg (Germany)
“What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?” Shakespeare’s Animals – a Class of Their Own.
We accept too easily that Shakespeare’s animals serve as metaphors that shed some light on human behaviour. Nevertheless, Shakespeare’s plays also gesture at a methodological crisis at a time when proto-morphological and proto-ethological observations challenged authorities like Aristotle and Pliny. In my paper, I argue that Shakespeare’s plays acknowledge this crisis. Following Laurie Shannon, I suggest that the term ‘animal’, used only eight times by Shakespeare, needs to be reconsidered in the light of husbandry manuals. If we wish to assess Shakespeare’s place among the animals, it is this domain of practical knowledge that we should consider more carefully.
3. Martin Hyatt, Ph.D., independent scholar
Shakespeare and Birds
Where did Shakespeare acquire his knowledge of birds? Some would have been familiar from the English countryside. Others were familiar from traditions involving a variety of literary and scientific texts. Birds appeared as natural history subjects in the ancient science of Pliny and Aristotle and as characters in the classical stories of Ovid and others. Did Shakespeare also demonstrate familiarity with newer natural historians such as Turner and Gesner? Did he favour new knowledge over old or natural knowledge over mythological? From Shakespeare’s varied use of birds, I will select some pertinent examples to explore these questions.
4. Jarosław Włodarczyk, Polish Academy of Sciences and Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin
and Zuzanna Czerniak, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin (Poland)
Astronomical Fragments in Shakespeare and Modern History of Astronomy
Tracing and interpreting astronomical fragments found in Shakespeare’s works has a long tradition. The exegetes have included astronomers, Shakespeare scholars, historians of science, and simply lovers of Shakespeare. Their conclusions span a wide range of readings, from proposed identification of celestial portents to the claim that at least some of Shakespeare’s plays are an allegorical presentation of scientific conflict between the chief cosmological models of his time. In this paper we would like to argue that in such investigations there might still be room for analytical tools borrowed from contemporary history of astronomy and the history of science.
5. Christopher Leslie, Polytechnic School of Engineering at New York University (USA)
Specters of Unnatural History in Macbeth
By the early sixteenth century, groups of naturalists engaged in a collective enterprise to distinguish the inhabitants of the natural world. Given this context, Macbeth’s narrative, which relies on haunts and apparitions, may seem anomalous. Spiritual phenomenon, combined with weather imagery, create a world that at first seems to reinforce premodern notions of the natural world. The play’s tragic outcome, of course, does not validate the actions of its characters, and so too, one can read the high degree of praeternatural imagery as a warning to the contemporary audience. Macbeth demonstrates the bankruptcy of those who rely on supernatural portents.
6. Marianne Kimura, Yamaguchi Prefectural College (Japan)
Hamlet as a Cosmic Allegory about Solar Energy
Hillary Gatti’s The Renaissance Drama of Knowledge (1989) draws many parallels between Giordano Bruno’s Lo Spaccio della besta trionfante and Hamlet. Gatti plausibly suggests that the book Hamlet is reading is this one. She refers to a Hermetic “hidden secret,” buried in the play. Bruno fashioned his own art of memory using his own astronomical and scientific ideas and this architecture of basic cosmic relationships became a framework for Shakespeare. Given Shakespeare’s general interest in solar energy, it is possible to see how Hamlet functions as a solar energy allegory that contains the playwright himself in a big way.
7. Shu-hua Chung, Tung Fang Design Institute (Taiwan)
Nature in The Tempest
In depicting natural world in The Tempest, Shakespeare reveals two contradictory views of nature — an organism and a machine. In The Tempest, natural phenomena can be changed by human magic; namely, the natural world is undermined by science. In my paper, from an ecological perspective, focusing on how Shakespeare presents natural world and its interaction with humankind, I argue that it is hard for humankind to think scientifically nature as a machine to replace nature as an organism, and that the flourishing of science cannot absolutely guarantee humankind against harm to enjoy the fruit of happiness.
8. Neslihan Ekmekçioğlu, Hacettepe University and Bilkent University (Turkey)
The Tempest in Prospero’s Mind and in Outer Space, Reflecting the Creative Imagination of the Artist and the Natural History of the Time
The Tempest has a symmetrical structure of correspondences that evoke the multiplicity of a hall of mirrors in which everything reflects and re-reflects everything. Music is used as a device of creating harmony and operates as an acoustic ‘mirror of truth’ referring to psychic purification. Shakespeare employs the alchemical meaning of the ‘tempest,’ pointing to ‘a boiling process’ that removes impurities. Jarman’s The Tempest and Peter Greeneaway’s Prospero’s Books reflect a deep interest in Renaissance Hermeticism and a fascination with the occult. This paper deals with the importance of alchemy, psychic purification and music in Shakespeare’s last play.