Editions Rodopi BV is pleased to announce following new publication in
Comparative Literature:
Macbeth Multiplied. Negotiating historical and medial difference between
Shakespeare and Verdi.
Christoph Clausen
Amsterdam/New York, NY 2005. 285 pp. (Internationale Forschungen zur
Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft 93)
ISBN: 90-420-1887-9 € 58,- / US $ 73.-
Online info: http://www.rodopi.nl/functions/search.asp?BookId=IFAVL+93
In what sense did Shakespeare’s representation of the Weird Sisters
participate in the rewriting of village witchcraft? Was it likely
to “encourage the Sword"? Did opera's specific medial conditions offer
Verdi special opportunities to justify the presence of stage witches more
than three centuries later? How valid is the parallel between 19th century
opera and the voyeurism of madhouse spectacle? Was Shakespeare's play
engaged in exorcizing Queen Elizabeth's cultural memory? What does Verdi's
chorus of Scottish refugees have to do with shifting representations
of 'the people'?
These are among the questions tackled in this study. It provides the first
in-depth comparison of Shakespeare's and Verdi's Macbeth that is written
expressly from the perspective of current Shakespearean criticism whilst
striving to do justice to the topic's musicological dimension at the same
time. Exploring to what extent the play's matrix of possible readings is
distinct from Verdi's two operatic versions, the book seeks to relate such
differences both to the historical contexts of the works' geneses and to
their respective medial conditions. In doing so, it pays particular
attention to shifting negotiations of witchcraft, gender, madness, and
kingship. The study eventually broadens its discussion to consider other
Shakespearean plays and their operatic offshoots, reflecting on some
possible relations between historical and medial difference.
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