Literature and culture today: Intertextuality: re-writing and adapting Hamlet

The course investigates the processes involved in the circulation of texts and themes in culture, focusing on intertextuality, adaptation, parody and re-writing.

The course investigates the processes involved in the circulation of texts and themes in culture, focusing on intertextuality, adaptation, parody and re-writing.

These processes will be examined taking as an example adaptations and new versions of William Shakespeare's Hamlet. The texts and films considered will include the plays by Tom Stoppard, feminist revisions of Shakespearean plays, postcolonial productions of Hamlet, psychoanalytic interpretations of Hamlet and iconographic representations of Ophelia.

1. Introduction

2. Intertextualities

3. Intertextualities – exercises

4. Adaptation/Appropriation

5. Parody

6. Post-colonial and multicultural Shakespeares

7. Hamlet by William Shakespeare (the original?)

8. Hamlet 2000 (Michael Almereyda)

9. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard (film adaptation); 15 minute Hamlet by Tom Stoppard

10-11. Ophelia – madness, iconography, the Internet, parody (2 meetings: theory + mini-presentations)

12. Ophelia by Bryony Lavery, Pushing the Prince into Denmark by Deborah Levy - feminist revisions

13. Psychoanalytic interpretations

14-15. Presentations of the theatre/film/music/art/video projects based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet (in groups)

The seminar is accompanied by a Moodle course in which students will find the excerpts from the theoretical and literary texts for reading, examples, as well as discussion questions.

Assessment methods:

Project presentation – W1, U1, U2, U3, U4, K1

Mini-presentation (representations of Ophelia) – W1, U2, U3, U4, K1

Participation in discussion – W1, U1, U2, U3, U4, K1

Components of the final mark:

Project presentation and description (50%)

Mini-presentation (Ophelia) (20%)

Regular attendance, participation in discussion (30%)

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Selected chapters from:

Allen, Graham. 2000. Intertextuality. London: Routledge.

Dentith, Simon. 2000. Parody. London, NY: Routledge.

Drakakis, John (ed.). 1985. Alternative Shakespeares. London: Routledge.

Kristeva, Julia. 1984. Revolution in Poetic Language. New York: Columbia University Press.

Novy, Marianne (ed.). 2000. Transforming Shakespeare: Contemporary Women’s Re-Visions in Literature and Performance. NY: Palgrave.

Peterson, Kaara. 1998. Framing Ophelia: Representation and the pictorial tradition. Mosaic : a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature. Winnipeg: Sep 1998.Vol. 31, Iss. 3.

Sanders, Julie. 2006. Adaptation and Appropriation. London: Routledge.

Showalter, Elaine. 1987. The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture. London: Virago.

Further reading:

Chedgzoy, Kate (ed.). 2001. Shakespeare, Feminism and Gender. NY: Palgrave.

Hedrick, Donald and Bryan Reynolds. 2000. Shakespeare without Class. NY: Palgrave.

Lorek-Jezińska, Edyta. 2012. “Re-Writing Ophelia: Iconography of Madness and Death in Bryony Lavery’s and Deborah Levy’s Plays”. The Visual and the Verbal in Film, Drama, Literature and Biography. Ed. Mirosława Buchholtz, Grzegorz Koneczniak. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 43-63.

Orr, Mary. 2003. Intertextuality: Debates and contexts. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Rose, Margaret. 1993. Parody: Ancient, Modern, and Post-Modern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sosnowska, Monika. 2009. “New York City of 2000 as Pars Pro Toto in Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet”. Images of the City. Ed. A. Rasmus and M. Cieślak. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 135-146.