François-Xavier P. Gleyzon

Shakespeare's Spiral (eBook, PDF)

Tracing the Snail in King Lear and Renaissance Painting

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Shakespeare's Spiral aims to explore a figure forgotten in the dramatic texts of Shakespeare and in Renaissance painting: the snail. Taking as its point of departure the emergence of the gastropod object/subject in the text of King Lear as well as its iconic interface in Giovanni Bellini's painting Allegory of Falsehood (circa 1490), this study sets out to follow the particular path traced by the snail throughout the oeuvre. From the central scene in which the metaphor of the snail and of its shell is specifically made manifest when Lear discovers, in a raging storm, the spectacle of Edgar disguised as Poor Tom coming out of his shelter (III.3.6-9) to the monster, this fiend, displaying on the cliffs of Dover, "horms whelked and waved like the enridgèd sea" (IV.6.71), this work is the trace of a narrative - of a journey of the gaze - during the course of which the cryptic question of the gastropod - "Why a Snail [...]?" (I.5.26) - does not cease to be developed and transformed. Incorporating a wide-ranging post-structuralist critique, the study aims to bring to light the particular functions of this "revealing detail" in both its textual and visual dimension so as to put forward a new and innovatory understanding of the tragedy of King Lear.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury eBooks US
• Seitenzahl: 300
• Erscheinungstermin: 19. März 2010
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780761881964
• Artikelnr.: 75138110

Autorenporträt

François-Xavier Gleyzon is assistant professor of English at the American University of Beirut. His publications include "Christine Buci-Glucksmann: Shakespeare and the Archaeology of Shadows," along with articles on English Renaissance literature in relation to visual arts. His current research focuses on Shakespeare, religion, and terror.

Inhaltsangabe

Chapter 1 List of Illustrations
Chapter 2 Acknowledgements
Chapter 3 Introduction
Part 4 Part One: A Shakespearean Gaze at the Snail
Chapter 5 1. Introducing the Snail
Chapter 6 2. From the Hovel to the Shell
Chapter 7 3. Mutatis Mutandis I: From the Snail to the Worm
Chapter 8 4. The Decadence of the Garden Snail
Chapter 9 5. Mutatis Mutandis II: From the Worm to the Shell
Chapter 10 6. The Resurrection Shell
Chapter 11 7. The Virgin Mary's Snail
Chapter 12 8. Opening up the Spiral Quest
Part 13 Part Two: The Renascent Spiral: Dazzling-Darkening
Chapter 14 1. Introduction: Seeing and Thinking Blindly
Chapter 15 2. Dazzling-Darkening in King Lear
Chapter 16 3. Conclusion: The Eye-Spiral: Shakespeare - Charcot - Dürer
Part 17 Part Three: Under the Eye of Gorgô or the Medusa-Snail
Chapter 18 1. Recapitulation and Re: Capitulation
Chapter 19 2. Theoretical and Aporetic Considerations
Chapter 20 3. Sleep and Macbeth
Chapter 21 4. Return to King Lear: The Medusa-Snail
Chapter 22 Bibliography

Rezensionen

Shakespeare's Spiral takes part in the new attention to the Creature, the Thing, and forms of life in literary, philosophical, and iconographic studies of Renaissance matter. In this witty and moving book, Gleyzon twists natural history, biopolitics, and the ecology of signs into a single spiral of incarnate thought, presenting the [snail] as both an object and a method for contemporary engagement with major and minor life forms of the past and present. -- Julia Reinhard Lupton, The University of California, Irvine The Spiral is at once beautiful and rare. -- Juliet Fleming, New York University and the University of Cambridge An evocative, genuinely exploratory study - rangy and surprising. Gleyzon combines an extraordinary range of theoretical reference, an instinct for the improbable and illuminating conjunction - Charcot and Durer, western thought and the gastropod - with a refined attentiveness to the poetics of text and language. -- Christopher Pye, Williams College Shakespeare's Spiral deserves to be read by scholars in and outside of the Shakespearean "shellter" (p. xix). The book invites critics to come out of their methodological shells; for this reason perhaps-in the words of an early review of Catch-22-it will prove to be 'a dazzling performance that will outrage nearly as many readers as it delights'. English Studies