Contemporary Shakespearean bodies: adapting forms across media

Holman, Megan Caitlin Maeve (2021) Contemporary Shakespearean bodies: adapting forms across media. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

This thesis explores how contemporary adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays across puppet theatre, animation, and graphic novels use mediatised bodies to augment or expand their narratives. In this context, “mediatised” refers to corporeal forms produced by means which permit or necessitate the full or partial absence of a live body. I argue that the artificial bodies foregrounded by the selected media provide sites for negotiating contemporary issues regarding identity and embodiment, while also elucidating how Shakespeare’s narratives continue to engage modern audiences. Each chapter performs close visual readings of mediatised adaptations illuminating different facets of embodied experience: colonialism and physical difference; gender and adolescence; disability and political power; and our relationships with technology and the environment. These readings also identify resonances with the concerns and motifs of the play’s original texts, suggesting ways in which Shakespeare is a useful tool for reflecting on and renegotiating our place in the world. These explorations build towards wide-reaching conclusions about how embodied identity is constructed in Shakespeare, popular culture, and beyond.

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