Ovid and Adaptation in Early Modern English Theatre

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa S. Starks
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Renaissance Drama ◽  
Adaptation Theory ◽  
Adaptation Studies ◽  
English Renaissance Drama ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Theatrical Performance ◽  
Trans Studies ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Mary Sidney Herbert

Ovid was a multifaceted icon of lovesickness, endless change, libertinism, emotional torment and violence in early modern England. This collection uses adaptation studies in connection with other contemporary theoretical approaches to analyze early modern transformations of Ovid, providing innovative perspectives on the “Ovids” that haunted the early modern stage, while exploring intersections between adaptation theory and gender/queer/trans studies, ecofeminism, hauntology, transmediality, rhizomatics and more. The chapters explore Ovidian adaptations in the works of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Mary Sidney Herbert, Lyly, Hewood, among others. The volume is divided into four sections: I. Gender/Queer/Trans Studies and Ovidian Rhizomes; II. Ovidian Specters and Remnants; III. Affect, Rhetoric, and Ovidian Appropriation; and IV. Ovid Remixed: Transmedial, Rhizomatic, and Hyperreal Adaptations.” Focusing on these larger topics, this book examines the multidimensional, ubiquitous role that Ovid and Ovidian adaptations played in English Renaissance drama and theatrical performance. The book contains chapters by Simone Chess, Shannon Kelley, Daniel G. Lauby, Deborah Uman, Lisa S. Starks, John S. Garrison, Catherine Winiarski, Jennifer Feather, John D. Staines, Goran Stanivukovic, Louise Geddes, Liz Oakley-Brown, Ed Gieskes, and Jim Casey.

Oh Hi There History: An Adaptation of Historical Research and an Exploration of Fidelity Discourse through Practice

Adaptation ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-160
Author(s):  
Lydia Nicholson
Keyword(s):  
Research Strategy ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Adaptation Theory ◽  
Adaptation Studies ◽  
Web Series ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Practice Based Research ◽  
Adaptation Practice ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Adaptation studies theorists have debated the value and scope of fidelity criticism for decades, but the application of fidelity discourse from an adaptation practitioner perspective is vastly under-researched. Using a practice-based research strategy, this article describes how a consideration of fidelity discourse during the development of the web-series, Oh Hi There History, supported the development of the series as an adapted text and raised new questions about adaptation theory and practice. Oh Hi There History is an adaptation of the Founders and Survivors project’s research into Tasmanian convict history. This article considers the binary of in/fidelity in a practitioner context, analyses how fidelity taxonomies might be applied to the development of an adapted text, and explores the possibilities of applying through practice theoretical approaches to fidelity discourse around intertextuality and history-as-adaptation. By applying these theories in a new context, this article argues that practice-based research can provide new insight into fidelity discourse and new ways of understanding the role of fidelity in adaptation practice.

Nobody, Somebody, and King Lear

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Womack
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Renaissance Drama ◽  
English Renaissance ◽  
Positive Events ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
English Renaissance Drama ◽  
The University

The approximately contemporary Jacobean plays, King Lear and Nobody and Somebody, share an ancient British setting, a preoccupation with instability in the state, and an unsettling interest in negation. Peter Womack here suggests that by reading them together we can retrieve some of the theatrical strangeness which the more famous of the two has lost through familiarity and naturalization. The dramatic mode of existence of the character called ‘Nobody’ is paradoxical, denaturing – an early modern visual and verbal Verfremdungseffekt, at once philosophical and clownish. His negativity, which is articulated in dialogue with the companion figure of ‘Somebody’, is matched in King Lear, above all in the role of Edgar, but also by a more diffused state of being (withdrawal, effacement, folly) which the play generates in reaction to its positive events. Ultimately the negation in both plays is social in character: ‘Nobody’ is the dramatic face of the poor and oppressed. Peter Womack teaches literature at the University of East Anglia. His most recent book is English Renaissance Drama (2006), in the Blackwell Guides to Literature series.

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