Panel 5: Born before and after Shakespeare

Schedule / Horaire

Panel A: Saturday 26 April 2014, 9h-10h30

Panel B: Saturday 26 April 2014, 11h-12h30.

Room: Vendôme.

Leaders / Organisatrices

Anne-Valérie Dulac, Université Paris 13 Nord (France) and Laetitia Sansonetti, École polytechnique and EA PRISMES – Université Paris 3 (France)

Participants

Panel A: Tradition and the Shakespearean talent (chair: Laetitia Sansonetti)

  1. Andy Auckbur, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne (France)
    “He was another Nature”: Shakespeare’s genius and sixteenth-century literary theory
  2. Daniel Cadman, Sheffield Hallam University (United Kingdom)
    ‘Quick Comedians’: Garnier, Sidney, and Antony and Cleopatra
  3. Sally Barnden, King’s College, London (United Kingdom)
    The man with the skull: negotiating Hamlet’s appropriation of memento mori art

Panel B: Shakespeare and his foils (chair: Anne-Valérie Dulac)

  1. Chantal Schütz, École polytechnique and EA PRISMES – Université Paris 3 (France)
    Middleton and Shakespeare: collaboration, parody and rewriting
  2. Rémi Vuillemin, Université de Strasbourg (France)
    ‘The course of true love never did run smooth’: Renaissance Petrarchism and Shakespearean criticism
  3. Laetitia Sansonetti, École polytechnique and EA PRISMES – Université Paris 3 (France)
    Shakespeare = Marlowe + Spenser? The coincidence of opposites as critical dogma

Abstracts / Résumés

1. Andy Auckbur, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne (France)
“He was another Nature”: Shakespeare’s genius and sixteenth-century literary theory

In this paper, I intend to show how the eighteenth-century English Shakespearean critics reverted to a sixteenth-century conception of the poet as “Maker” in order to grant him a quasi-divine status partially originating from a conception of the role of the poet which was expressed in works such as Philip Sidney’s Defence of Poesy. Such an endeavour requires that we delve into the conceptual foundations on which a progressive acknowledgment of Shakespeare’s talent was built and which later led to the deification process which contributed to creating an icon of English literature.

2. Daniel Cadman, Sheffield Hallam University (United Kingdom)
‘Quick Comedians’: Garnier, Sidney, and Antony and Cleopatra

Critical discussions of Cleopatra’s resonance in Renaissance drama have long been dominated by Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, a trend that has marginalised Mary Sidney’s play, Antonius, and its source, Robert Garnier’s Marc Antoine. It has been a commonplace to regard Shakespeare’s play, with its expansive time-frame and its representation of events like the Battle of Actium, as antithetical to the neo-classicism that characterises Sidney’s play. However, this paper argues that these plays should be considered as part of a shared tradition that emphasises Cleopatra’s retreat into the private space of her tomb and her resistance to becoming a theatrical spectacle.

3. Sally Barnden, King’s College, London (United Kingdom)
The man with the skull: negotiating Hamlet’s appropriation of memento mori art

Since the late nineteenth century, the Yorick image has been the commonly accepted strategy for representing Hamlet in visual shorthand. Itself an animation of a pre-existing art-historical trope, the encounter between Hamlet and Yorick is echoed by meetings of men and skulls in The Honest Whore and The Revenger’s Tragedy. In this paper, I aim to reassess the relationship of the skull scenes in those three plays before and after the influence of the composition’s appropriation by visual culture related to Hamlet, and consequently to raise questions about the role of visual culture in the canonisation of Shakespeare’s works.

4. Chantal Schütz, École polytechnique and EA PRISMES – Université Paris 3 (France)
Middleton and Shakespeare: collaboration, parody and rewriting

It would appear that Middleton was no more concerned than Shakespeare with attribution, let alone with collecting his theatrical works in a Folio volume. Yet thanks to Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino’s 2007 edition of his complete works, Middleton is no longer a non-entity in the catalogue of Jacobean authors. It is now agreed that Middleton collaborated with Shakespeare, possibly adapted two of his plays and abundantly quoted and parodied him. I will focus this paper on Middleton’s complex relationship to Shakespeare, trying to figure the constant “negotiations” between authors working in the same playhouses or in rival theatres.

5. Rémi Vuillemin, Université de Strasbourg (France)
‘The course of true love never did run smooth’: Renaissance Petrarchism and Shakespearean criticism

This paper will attempt to determine if, why and how the French focus on Shakespeare has been a deterrent to the study of Petrarchism and more particularly of the Petrarchan sonnet. It will focus on editions and on criticism of Shakespearean poems and plays dealing with love. Clearly, Petrarchism has often been used to provide a foil, a negative example against which the value of Shakespeare’s works has been set. In other instances, the question of Petrarchism has only been instrumental—and therefore presented in a much simplified version—to critical discourse.

6. Laetitia Sansonetti, École polytechnique and EA PRISMES – Université Paris 3 (France)
Shakespeare = Marlowe + Spenser? The coincidence of opposites as critical dogma

Patrick Cheney’s trilogy of books on Spenser, Marlowe and Shakespeare offered a solution to the problem posed by Richard Helgerson’s dual categorisation of Elizabethan and Jacobean authors into “prodigals” and “laureates” by making room for Shakespeare, who could fit into neither of Helgerson’s categories. Yet in using Marlowe and Spenser in order to present Shakespeare, “national poet-playwright,” as their synthesis, Cheney tended to downplay their similarities. This paper will ask what such an outlook has entailed for our understanding of Marlowe and Spenser as Shakespeare’s contemporaries – and whether there is another way to deal with the three authors.