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Hokkaido University Collection of Scholarly and Academic Papers >
Graduate School of International Media, Communication and Tourism Studies / Research Faculty of Media and Communication >
国際広報メディア・観光学ジャーナル = The Journal of International Media, Communication, and Tourism Studies >
No.14 >
Shakespeare's Narration
| Title: | Shakespeare's Narration |
| Authors: | Twiddy, Iain Browse this author |
| Issue Date: | 15-Mar-2012 |
| Publisher: | 北海道大学大学院国際広報メディア・観光学院 |
| Journal Title: | 国際広報メディア・観光学ジャーナル |
| Journal Title(alt): | The Journal of International Media, Communication, and Tourism Studies |
| Volume: | 14 |
| Start Page: | 71 |
| End Page: | 86 |
| Abstract: | In analysing the impossibility of a harmonious union with a Montague, Juliet dissects internal from external identity, imaginatively instructing Romeo to 'doff thy name / And for thy name, which is no part of thee, / Take all myself'. The potential marriage is precluded not by an innate identity, but by Romeo's status, his position as a signifier in the text of Verona's rigid familial superstructure. Juliet proposes an active self-narration in opposition to its passive endurance, and a possible union with Romeo is an attempted translation. Juliet assumes that in such a translation the 'innate' self remains inviolable, but as the play demonstrates in the protagonists' deaths, internal and external identities are impossible to dissever, and the alteration of a single signifier is inextricable from the mutation of its context, the familial network; as Romeo laments, it is not he, but his 'name's cursed hand' that is responsible for the death of Juliet's kinsman Tybalt. Shakespearean characters constitute texts within contexts, the networks of family and state in which they function. They experience the divisive condition of attempting to narrate while continually being narrated. Internal and external crises occur at the points where characters recognize themselves as textual characters, and when they either claim or rescind control over their narrative meaning. Attempts to translate the self and others, and to show others as they are perceived, frequently result in personal suffering, due to the difficulty of interpreting competing levels of signification within power structures: characters as signifiers switch between monosemic, metaphorical and polysemic roles. In The Merchant of Venice, religious identity is both innate and mutable as it serves the interest of economics. Shylock attempts to expose the Christians' practice of duplicitous literalism through his bond, but justice itself is a nebulous and manipulable entity. In the death of his father, Hamlet is unwilling to play his expected role in the new theatre of state, and attempts to perpetuate the original condition through administering justice; by the end of the play the state is translated by foreign occupation. Richard, Duke of Gloucester's active narration of others and the creation of the unreadable self, in the construction of the text of kingship, ultimately effect self-abnegation, the destruction of the self as a signifier and the loss of any kind of autonomy, as he is replaced by another actor in the role of king. Examining the nature of this dialectic of passive and active narration, where characters narrate and are narrated, requires considering liminal places of conflict in the different translating actions ― whether of the self or others ― that characters perform, and the complex signifying operations of power structures. |
| Type: | bulletin (article) |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2115/48864 |
| Appears in Collections: | 国際広報メディア・観光学ジャーナル = The Journal of International Media, Communication, and Tourism Studies > No.14
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Submitter: Iain Twiddy
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