Ovid and Adaptation in Early Modern English Theatre
Edited by Lisa Starks
- Applies contemporary theoretical approaches, such as gender/queer/trans studies, feminist ecostudies, hauntology, rhizomatic adaptation, transmediality
- Uses adaptation studies in analyzing early modern transformations of Ovid
- Focuses on the appropriations of "Ovid" (as an umbrella term for "all things Ovidian") on the early modern English stage
- Includes chapters on Shakespeare and Marlowe as well as other early modern dramatists
Did 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.
Permissions Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Representing "Ovids" on the Early Modern English Stage - Lisa S. Starks
I. Gender/Queer/Trans Studies and Ovidian Rhizomes
1. Queer Gender Informants in Ovid and Shakespeare - Simone Chess2. Women in Trees: Adapting Ovid for John Lyly’s Love’s Metamorphosis (1589) - Shannon Kelley3. Queer Fidelity: Marlowe’s Ovid and the Staging of Desire in Dido, Queen of Carthage - Daniel G. Lauby4. "Let Rome in Tiber melt": Hermaphroditic Transformation in Antonius and Antony and Cleopatra - Deborah Uman
II. Ovidian Specters and Remnants
5. Ovid’s Ghosts: Lovesickness, Theatricality, and Ovidian Spectrality on the Early Modern English Stage - Lisa S. Starks6. Medea’s Afterlife: Encountering Ovid in The Tempest - John S. Garrison7. Remnants of Virgil, Ovid, and Paul in Titus Andronicus - Catherine Winiarski
III. Affect, Rhetoric, and Ovidian Appropriation
8. Power, Emotion, and Appropriation in Ovid’s Tristia and Shakespeare’s Henry V - Jennifer Feather9. Appropriating Ovid’s Tyrannical Raptures in Macbeth - John D. Staines10. Ovid and the Styles of Adaptation in The Two Gentlemen of Verona - Goran Stanivukovic
IV. Ovid Remixed: Transmedial, Rhizomatic, and Hyperreal Adaptations
11. "Truly, and very notably discharg’d": The Metamorphosis of Pyramus and Thisbe and the Place of Appropriation on the Early Modern Stage - Louise Geddes12. The Golden Age Rescored?: Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Thomas Heywood’s The Ages - Liz Oakley-Brown13. "Materia conveniente modis": Early Modern Dramatic Adaptations of Ovid - Ed Gieskes14. Worse than Philomel, Worse than Actaeon: Hyperreal Ovid in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus - Jim Casey
Index
Throughout the collection there is excellent analysis of texts and some very inventive readings and comparisons. [...] This volume offers a significant contribution to the field.
This spirited collection offers diverse views on the uptake and remediation of Ovid, from direct citation and allusion to structure, character, and style. Extending the critical purview to include such matters as queer gender informants, arborified women, sovereign power, and tyrannical rapture, the contributors expose the complex dimensions of Ovid’s openness to derivation, his rhizomatic and dialogic modes of influence and his ongoing spectral presence as Renaissance texts are remixed in the present day.
