‘[T]he fire is grown too hot!’: Romeo and Juliet and the Dog Days

2019 ◽  
pp. 57-79
Author(s):  
Sophie Chiari
Keyword(s):  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Climatic Pattern

In Romeo and Juliet (1595-96), weather and humoural determinism play a central role with the background references to the dog days that may, up to a certain extent, be held responsible for both plague and misrule so that, beyond bad luck or misfortune, the influence of the stars turns out to be preponderant in the lovers’ fate. In such a context, the play’s heavenly signs take on an importance almost equal to that of the earthly events, to the point that heat may be considered as a major actor in the tragedy. As an anagram of ‘hate’, ‘heat’ overdetermines the climate of the play. Both words foreshadow the flare up of violence in Verona, leading Romeo and Juliet to be trapped in an overall astronomical, humoural, and climatic pattern giving them virtually no chance to escape the stifling air of Verona. Besides, the chapter suggests that light and lightning, omnipresent in the tragedy, also emphasise the violence of passions and reinforce the inevitability of the lovers’ final death march inscribed in the sonnet prologue.

Romeo and Juliet

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Thomas Moisan
Keyword(s):  
Romeo And Juliet

Shakespeare's Representation of Weather, Climate and Environment

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Chiari
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
As You Like It ◽  
Ability To Act

While ecocritical approaches to literary texts receive more and more attention, climate-related issues remain fairly neglected, particularly in the field of Shakespeare studies. This monograph explores the importance of weather and changing skies in early modern England while acknowledging the fact that traditional representations and religious beliefs still fashioned people’s relations to meteorological phenomena. At the same time, a growing number of literati stood against determinism and defended free will, thereby insisting on man’s ability to act upon celestial forces. Yet, in doing so, they began to give precedence to a counter-intuitive approach to Nature. Sophie Chiari argues that Shakespeare reconciles the scholarly views of his time with more popular ideas rooted in superstition and that he promotes a sensitive, pragmatic understanding of climatic events. She pays particular attention to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Othello, King Lear, Anthony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest. Taking into account the influence of classical thought, each of the book’s seven chapters emphasises specific issues (e.g. cataclysmic disorders, the dog days’ influence, freezing temperatures, threatening storms) and considers the way climatic events were presented on stage and how they came to shape the production and reception of Shakespeare’s drama.

Shakespeare’s Dancing Bodies

2019 ◽  
pp. 172-196
Author(s):  
Brandon Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
The Body ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Somatic Psychology ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Early Modern Times

Romeo’s well-known excuse that he cannot dance because he has soles of lead is demonstrative of the autonomous volitional quality Shakespeare ascribes to body parts, his utilization of humoral somatic psychology, and the horizontally divided body according to early modern dance practice and theory. This chapter considers the autonomy of and disagreement between the body parts and the unruliness of the humors within Shakespeare’s dramas, particularly Romeo and Juliet. An understanding of the body as a house of conflicting parts can be applied to the feet of the dancing body in early modern times, as is evinced not only by literary texts, but dance manuals as well. The visuality dominating the dance floor provided opportunity for social advancement as well as ridicule, as contemporary sources document. Dance practice is compared with early modern swordplay in their shared approaches to the training and social significance of bodily proportion and rhythm.

scholarly journals Romeo and Juliet: Perceptions of love of stigmatized relationships

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-112
Author(s):  
Thomas R. Brooks ◽  
Stephen Reysen ◽  
Iva Katzarska-Miller
Keyword(s):  
Relationship Satisfaction ◽  
Perceived Stigma ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Study Participants

We examined the connection between the perception of love and stigma in relationships and how much stigma needs to be present to elicit a heightened perception of love. Participants in the first study rated several relationships on the degree of stigma each one of them faced, and how much the individuals in each relationship loved each other—the perception of the Romeo and Juliet effect. In the second study, participants read a scenario of a male, gay relationship with various degree of stigma (none, one, two, or three sources), and rated how much the couple loved each other. The results suggest that there is a perception that the Romeo and Juliet effect exists, despite evidence that does not (Sinclair, Hood, & Wright, 2014). Individuals in relationships, which face stigma from multiple sources, are believed to love each other more than those with no stigma. Together, the results suggest that perceived stigma and love in a relationship are positively associated, which runs counter to better supported models of relationship satisfaction (Parks, Stan, & Eggert, 1983).

scholarly journals Topoclimate Mapping Using Landsat ETM+ Thermal Data: Wolin Island, Poland

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 2712
Author(s):  
Marta Ciazela ◽  
Jakub Ciazela
Keyword(s):  
Land Surface ◽  
Meteorological Data ◽  
Remote Sensing Data ◽  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Boundary Layer Processes ◽  
Lowland Area ◽  
Agricultural Areas ◽  
Glacial Landforms ◽  
Climatic Pattern

Variations in climatic pattern due to boundary layer processes at the topoclimatic scale are critical for ecosystems and human activity, including agriculture, fruit harvesting, and animal husbandry. Here, a new method for topoclimate mapping based on land surface temperature (LST) computed from the brightness temperature of Landsat ETM+ thermal bands (band6) is presented. The study was conducted in a coastal lowland area with glacial landforms (Wolin Island). The method presented is universal for various areas, and is based on freely available remote sensing data. The topoclimatic typology obtained was compared to the classical one based on meteorological data. It was proven to show a good sensitivity to changes in topoclimatic conditions (demonstrated by changes in LST distribution) even in flat, agricultural areas with only small variations in topography. The technique will hopefully prove to be a convenient and relatively fast tool that can improve the topoclimatic classification of other regions. It could be applied by local authorities and farmer associations for optimizing agricultural production.

scholarly journals Shakespeare and Keraliyatha: Romeo and Juliet, adaptation, and South Indian cinemas

2021 ◽  
pp. 018476782199998
Author(s):  
Mark Thornton Burnett
Keyword(s):  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
South Indian ◽  
Local Cultures

This article discusses two Romeo and Juliet adaptations from Kerala, Annayum Rasoolum (dir. Rajeev Ravi, 2013) and Eeda (dir. B. Ajithkumar, 2018). Both films situate the lovers in a regional milieu which challenges notions of progress, as representations of political and religious contest suggest. Taking Ratheesh Radhakrishnan’s claim that the Malayalam film prioritises Keraliyatha or ‘Kerala-ness’, I suggest that songs and rituals are crucial to the films’ imagining of the lovers in relation to local cultures. Annayum Rasoolum and Eeda hold out the prospect of different futures, yet, ultimately, fall back on ambiguated conclusions and spectacles of separation and precarity.

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