Cannibalism, severed hands and severed heads, rape, murder, tragedy and â " of course â " the Classics. These are a few of the delights audiences have to look forward to in Titus Andronicus. Itâ (TM)s a play of extremes, as likely to provoke severe discomfort as severe delight. Titus has claimed its fair share of critical attention. In particular, its florid violence and the striking, tragic figure of Lavinia have proven a potent touchstone of modern Shakespearean criticism. But, for critics, the play is often just that: a touchstone, a way station to bigger and better things. In it, critics find portents of Lear in intransigent Titus or premonitions of Richard and Iago in Aaron. We believe, however, that Titus deserves a more sustained and eclectic analysis. This collection â " the first full length work devoted to Titus in a decade â " does just that. Rather than seeking a unifying vision in the play, Titus out of Joint: Reading the Fragmented Titus Andronicus approaches the play as inherently dissonant, a text that draws our attention directly to how it pulls apart rather than coheres. The essays in this volume examine Titus from a wide variety of theoretical and critical perspectives including: disability studies, history of the book, psychoanalysis, gender studies, and theater history. A conversation emerges in these pages between these different and often contrasting approaches to the play, a conversation that the editors hope will continue outside the covers of this collection.

Cannibalism, severed hands and severed heads, rape, murder, tragedy and - of course - the Classics. These are a few of the delights audiences have to look forward to in Titus Andronicus. It's a play of extremes, as likely to provoke severe discomfort as s

Drawing on both historical analysis and theories from the modern affective sciences, Shakespeare and Disgust argues that the experience of revulsion is one of Shakespeare's central dramatic concerns. Known as the 'gatekeeper emotion', disgust is the affective process through which humans protect the boundaries of their physical bodies from material contaminants and their social bodies from moral contaminants. Accordingly, the emotion provided Shakespeare with a master category of compositional tools – poetic images, thematic considerations and narrative possibilities – to interrogate the violation and preservation of such boundaries, whether in the form of compromised bodies, compromised moral actors or compromised social orders. Designed to offer both focused readings and birds-eye coverage, this volume alternates between chapters devoted to the sustained analysis of revulsion in specific plays (Titus Andronicus, Timon of Athens, Coriolanus, Othello and Hamlet) and chapters presenting a general overview of Shakespeare's engagement with certain kinds of prototypical disgust elicitors, including food, disease, bodily violation, race and sex disgust. Disgust, the book argues, is one of the central engines of human behaviour – and, somewhat surprisingly, it must be seen as a centrepiece of Shakespeare's affective universe.

Waveform champions the diversity of women?s approaches to the structure of the essay, today a site of invention and innovation, with experiments in col-lage, fragments, segmentation, braids, triptychs, and diptychs.

Child characters feature more numerously and prominently in the Shakespearean canon than in that of any other early modern playwright. Focusing on stage and film productions from the past four decades, this study addresses how Shakespeare's child characters are reflected, refracted and reinterpreted in performance. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates close reading, semiotics, childhood studies, queer theory and performance studies, Gemma Miller explores how a close analysis of Shakespeare's child characters, both in the text and in performance, can reveal often uncomfortable truths about contemporary ideas of childhood, as well as offer fresh insights into the plays. Among the works and productions analysed are stage productions of Richard III by Sean Holmes and Thomas Ostermeier; Jamie Lloyd's and Michael Boyd's stage productions of Macbeth and the films of Roman Polanski and Justin Kurzel; Deborah Warner's stage production of Titus Andronicus and filmed adaptations by Jane Howell and Julie Taymor; and stage productions of The Winter's Tale by Nicholas Hytner, and by Kenneth Branagh and Rob Ashford, and the ballet adaptation by Christopher Wheeldon.

Uses adaptation and appropriation studies to explore early modern textual and theatrical metamorphoses of OvidApplies contemporary theoretical approaches, such as gender/queer/trans studies, feminist ecostudies, hauntology, rhizomatic adaptation, transmedialityUses adaptation studies in analyzing early modern transformations of OvidFocuses on the appropriations of "e;Ovid"e; (as an umbrella term for "e;all things Ovidian"e;) on the early modern English stageIncludes chapters on Shakespeare and Marlowe as well as other early modern dramatistsDid you know that Ovid was a multifaceted icon of lovesickness, endless change, libertinism, emotional torment and violence in early modern England? This is the first collection to use adaptation studies in connection with other contemporary theoretical approaches in analysing early modern transformations of Ovid. It provides 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. This book examines the multidimensional, ubiquitous role that Ovid and Ovidian adaptations played in English Renaissance drama and theatrical performance.

Winner of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women’s Collaborative Book Prize 2017 Rethinking Feminism in Early Modern Studies is a volume of essays by leading scholars in the field of early modern studies on the history, present state, and future possibilities of feminist criticism and theory. It responds to current anxieties that feminist criticism is in a state of decline by attending to debates and differences that have emerged in light of ongoing scholarly discussions of race, affect, sexuality, and transnationalism-work that compels us continually to reassess our definitions of ’women’ and gender. Rethinking Feminism demonstrates how studies of early modern literature, history, and culture can contribute to a reimagination of feminist aims, methods, and objects of study at this historical juncture. While the scholars contributing to Rethinking Feminism have very different interests and methods, they are united in their conviction that early modern studies must be in dialogue with, and indeed contribute to, larger theoretical and political debates about gender, race, and sexuality, and to the relationship between these areas. To this end, the essays not only analyze literary texts and cultural practices to shed light on early modern ideology and politics, but also address metacritical questions of methodology and theory. Taken together, they show how a consciousness of the complexity of the past allows us to rethink the genealogies and historical stakes of current scholarly norms and debates.