Search & Browse

In exploring Shakespeare's combination of Ovid's Metamorphoses and the revenge tragedy form in Titus Andronicus, argues that Shakespeare unmasks the vulnerability and violence inherent in the Petrarchan blazon and exposes the brutality inscribed in the Elizabethan lyric.

Draws on Measure for Measure to investigate how the blazoned subject's body on stage can be fortified (although temporarily) by the blazon conventions which traditionally dismember and hide a poetic subject. Concludes that the material condition of the theater can create a space for the transformation of blazonic violence to a restorative act.

Examines Julie Taymor's Titus (q.v.) with emphasis on her transformation of the fragmented emblazoned body of Lavinia into a performing object "that affirms subjectivity as fantasy or virtual effect."

In examining the relationship between body and text in the histories, finds that Shakespeare turns to the poetics of the blazon to ease the transition between body and text.

Focuses on Adrian Noble's Plantagenets and John Barton and Peter Hall's Wars of the Roses (both q.v.) to explore how the material conditions of the theatrical body and the broken linkage between the part and the whole. Argues the blazon materialized in these productions threatens to negate a unifying gesture or the self-fashioning of the blasonneur.

In investigating how sleeping or dead figures are identified and blazoned in Cymbeline, finds that Shakespeare shows how the layers of overlapping social observation can stabilize the identity of a mis-recognized character.

Focuses on the trafficking of Cressida's body in Troilus and Cressida to suggest that the blazoning impulse fails to demarcate the subjective agent and the passive object in the play. Argues that Shakespeare theorizes literary models of agency in petrarchism and the matter of Troy through the blazoning of Cressida.

Draws on Macbeth to argue that heroism in early modern English literature projects a "complex political fantasy" that evolved during an era when an increasingly centralized monarchy diminished the autonomy of local governments.

Examines how violence intersects with gender in stage and film productions of Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear, arguing that faulty gender constructions revealed by violent episodes are a crucial component of these productions.

Examines the "'transspecies connections'" of the bear in Winter's Tale's stage direction "Exit, pursued by a bear" (3.3), arguing that its queer characteristics disrupt binary systems of difference. English summary.