Echoing Texts: George Chapmans Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles Duke of Byron

• Echoing Texts: George Chapmans Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles Duke of Byron is an intertextual study, offering a close comparative exploration of the discourses behind Chapmans text and the text itself with a view to activating the interpretive potential of the intertextual links. Chapter 2 investigates the French chronicle material from Edward Grimestons General Inventorie and how Chapmans departures from this material influence our reading. Chapters 3 and 4 look at the effects of the classical subtexts, above all transpositions from Homers Iliad, Plutarchs Moralia and Senecas Oedipus, but also Lucans Pharsalia. Chapter 5 deals with the cultural and political negotiations in the double play, tracing references to the earl of Essex and his rebellion and allusions to topical isues of Stuart kingship. The intertextual reading projects a problematization of the concept of the patriarchal monarch and the absolute state and a veiling of the representative of liberty and individual heroism in a nostalgic light. Together with the overlays of meaning caused by the classical texts, the changes in the chronicle material and the topical allusions register an ideological stance. Repressed, represented in sometimes devious ways, Chapmans version of near-contemporay events nevertheless makes a powerful statement about the relationship between ruler and ruled, pointing to problems of contemporary statecraft.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Konst (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

English Renaissance drama

intertextuality

Homer

Seneca

Plutarch

Lucan

historical and political issues

critique of absolutism

classical value system

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