Addressing for the first time Shakespeare’s place in counter-cultural cinema, this book examines and theorizes counter-hegemonic, postmodern, and post-punk Shakespeare in late 20th and early 21st century film. Drawing on a diverse range of case studies, Grant Ferguson presents an interdisciplinary approach that offers new theories on the nature and application of Shakespearean appropriations in the light of postmodern modes of representation. The book considers the nature of the Shakespearean inter-text in subcultural political contexts concerning the politicized aesthetics of a Shakespearean ‘body in pieces,’ the carnivalesque, and notions of Shakespeare as counter-hegemonic weapon or source of empowerment. Representative films use Shakespeare (and his accompanying cultural capital) to challenge notions of capitalist globalization, dominant socio-cultural ideologies, and hegemonic modes of expression. In response to a post-modern culture saturated with logos and semiotic abbreviations, many such films play with the emblematic imagery and references of Shakespeare’s texts. These curious appropriations have much to reveal about the elusive nature of intertextuality in late postmodern culture and the battle for cultural ownership of Shakespeare. As there has yet to be a study that isolates and theorizes modes of Shakespearean production that specifically demonstrate resistance to the social, political, ideological, aesthetic, and cinematic norms of the Western world, this book expands the dialogue around such texts and interprets their patterns of appropriation, adaptation, and representation of Shakespeare.

Addressing for the first time Shakespeare's place in counter-cultural cinema, this book examines and theorizes counter-hegemonic, postmodern, and post-punk Shakespeare in late 20th and early 21st century film. Drawing on a diverse range of case studies, Grant Ferguson presents an interdisciplinary approach that offers new theories on the nature and application of Shakespearean appropriations in the light of postmodern modes of representation. The book considers the nature of the Shakespearean inter-text in subcultural political contexts concerning the politicized aesthetics of a Shakespearean 'body in pieces, ' the carnivalesque, and notions of Shakespeare as counter-hegemonic weapon or source of empowerment. Representative films use Shakespeare (and his accompanying cultural capital) to challenge notions of capitalist globalization, dominant socio-cultural ideologies, and hegemonic modes of expression. In response to a post-modern culture saturated with logos and semiotic abbreviations, many such films play with the emblematic imagery and references of Shakespeare's texts. These curious appropriations have much to reveal about the elusive nature of intertextuality in late postmodern culture and the battle for cultural ownership of Shakespeare. As there has yet to be a study that isolates and theorizes modes of Shakespearean production that specifically demonstrate resistance to the social, political, ideological, aesthetic, and cinematic norms of the Western world, this book expands the dialogue around such texts and interprets their patterns of appropriation, adaptation, and representation of Shakespeare.

The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Adaptation explores the dynamics of adapted Shakespeare across a range of literary genres and new media forms. This comprehensive reference and research resource maps the field of Shakespeare adaptation studies, identifying theories of adaptation, their application in practice and the methodologies that underpin them. It investigates current research and points towards future lines of enquiry for students, researchers and creative practitioners of Shakespeare adaptation. The opening section on research methods and problems considers definitions and theories of Shakespeare adaptation and emphasises how Shakespeare is both adaptor and adapted.A central section develops these theoretical concerns through a series of case studies that move across a range of genres, media forms and cultures to ask not only how Shakespeare is variously transfigured, hybridised and valorised through adaptational play, but also how adaptations produce interpretive communities, and within these potentially new literacies, modes of engagement and sensory pleasures. The volume's third section provides the reader with uniquely detailed insights into creative adaptation, with writers and practice-based researchers reflecting on their close collaborations with Shakespeare's works as an aesthetic, ethical and political encounter. The Handbook further establishes the conceptual parameters of the field through detailed, practical resources that will aid the specialist and non-specialist reader alike, including a guide to research resources and an annotated bibliography.

Reveals a rich cinematic history, discussing Hamlet films from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.

Offering a comprehensive look at the strategies that filmmakers have employed in adapting Shakespeare's plays to the cinema, this book investigates what the task of Shakespearean adaptation reveals about film in general and focuses on patterns and approaches shared by various cinematic works. Buhler provides concise histories of each general strategy, which include non-illusionistic cinema, documentary interpretations, mass-market productions, transgressive and transnational cinema, and approaches that see film as either distinct from the stage or as an extension of theatrical traditions. The book spans more than a century of film, starting with the 1899 King John and extending through Michael Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Julie Taymor's Titus, and later releases.

An up-to-date survey of Shakespeare's King Lear on screen and the aesthetic, social and political issues raised by screen versions.

This anthology explores the recurring trope of the dead or absent mother in Western cultural productions. Across historical periods and genres, this dialogue has been employed to articulate and debate questions of politics and religion, social and cultural change as well as issues of power and authority within the family. Åström seeks to investigate the many functions and meanings of the dialogue by covering extensive material from the 1200s to 2014 including hagiography, romances, folktales, plays, novels, children’s literature and graphic novels, as well as film and television. This is achieved by looking at the discourse both as products of the time and culture that produced the various narratives, and as part of an on-going cultural conversation that spans the centuries, resulting in an innovative text that will be of great interest to all scholars of gender, feminist and media studies.

Pascale Aebischer provides the only comprehensive analysis of early modern drama on screen, expanding the scope of Shakespearean performance studies.

This handbook provides an extensive overview of traditional and emerging research areas within the field of intermediality studies, understood broadly as the study of interrelations among all forms of communicative media types, including transmedial phenomena. Section I offers accounts of the development of the field of intermediality - its histories, theories and methods. Section II and III then explore intermedial facets of communication from ancient times until the 21st century, with discussion on a wide range of cultural and geographical settings, media types, and topics, by contributors from a diverse set of disciplines. It concludes in Section IV with an emphasis on urgent societal issues that an intermedial perspective might help understand.

Shakespeare and Complexity Theory is the first book-length examination into how complexity theory may be incorporated within Shakespeare studies. The book demonstrates how complexity theory can illuminate our understanding of Shakespeare’s texts, early modern theatrical practices (from dance to co-authorship to stagecraft), pedagogy, and Shakespeare’s canonical place in contemporary culture. In its implementation of a scientific framework, this monograph taps into an area of increasing academic and research interest: the relationship between the sciences and the humanities.