Intimate Tragedies: Body Politics and Narrative Interruptions in Contemporary Rewritings of Shakespeare’s Richard III

Authors

  • Dana Monah Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iași, Romania

Keywords:

Richard III, rewriting, body, narrative, the avant-garde, women

Abstract

When they set Shakespeare’s Richard III into one night and eliminate most of the male characters, Italian actor and playwright Carmelo Bene’s Richard III or the Terrible Night of a Man of War (1977) and Flemish dramatist Peter Verhelst’s Richard III (2004) turn Richard’s story into an intimate, private tragedy. This article argues that, influenced by ideas and concepts developed by the theorists of the historical avant-gardes, both practitioners condense, fragment, atomise the story they borrow from Shakespeare, shifting the focus from the events themselves to the characters’ perception of the events, and foregrounding the image of the suffering or disabled body.

Author Biography

Dana Monah, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iași, Romania

DANA MONAH is a Lecturer in French literature and theatre studies at the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași, Romania. She holds a PhD in Theatre Studies from the Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III University and the University of Iași. Her publications include Shakespeare et ses doubles. Essai sur la réécriture théâtrale (L’Harmattan, Paris, 2017) as well as essays and articles in journals such as Cahiers Elisabethains, Alternatives Théâtrales, Coup de Théâtre, Studia Dramatica.

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Published

2023-04-24

How to Cite

Monah, D. (2023). Intimate Tragedies: Body Politics and Narrative Interruptions in Contemporary Rewritings of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai - Dramatica, 68(1), 103–113. Retrieved from http://dramatica.ro/index.php/j/article/view/273