In this dissertation, I examine the complex role that the body played in early modern constructions of judgment. Moving away from an overreliance on anti-theatrical texts as the authority on the body in Shakespeare's plays, my project intervenes in the field Shakespearean studies by widening the lens through which scholars view the body's role in the early modern theater. Through readings of four plays—Richard II, Hamlet, King Lear, and The Winter's Tale—I demonstrate that Shakespeare uses a wide range of ideas about the human body from religious, philosophical, medical, and cultural spheres of thought to challenge Puritan accusations that the public theater audience is incapable of rational judgment. The first chapter outlines the parameters of the project. In Chapter 2, I argue that Richard II draws parallels between the theatrical community and the community created through the sacramental experiences of baptism and communion to show that bodies play a crucial role in establishing common experience and providing an avenue for judgment. In Chapter 3, I argue that Shakespeare establishes correspondences between bodily and social collaboration to show how both are needed for the memory-making project of the theater. In the next chapter, I show how Shakespeare appropriates what early moderns perceived of as the natural vulnerability in English bodies to suggest the passionate responses associated with impressionability can actually be sources of productive judgment and self-edification. I argue the storm models this passionate judgment, providing a guide for audience behavior. In Chapter 5, I argue that the memories created by and within the women in The Winter's Tale evoke the tradition of housewifery and emphasize the female role in preservation. Female characters stand in for hidden female contributors to the theater and expose societal blindness to women's work. Through each of these chapters, I argue that Shakespeare's plays emphasize the value of bodily experience and suggest that the audience take up what I have termed "corporeal judgment."

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William Shakespeare es, sin lugar a dudas, uno de los dramaturgos más brillantes y más representados del teatro universal. Su obra es ampliamente reconocida y considerada en la literatura y las artes escénicas por la riqueza temática que guarda y las múltiples posibilidades interpretativas que alberga, según el punto de vista de cada director. El reto de montar un Shakespeare no es sencillo, pues hay que combatir cierta resistencia del público hacia los llamados autores clásicos. El hecho de pretender acercar a Shakespeare al espectador de hoy conlleva siempre riesgos. Muchas veces se pretende actualizar a Shakespeare empleando recursos escénicos modernos, como vestuario, escenografia, modismos al hablar, etcétera. Pero sólo se consigue una modernización artificial que no cumple con la misión de revelar la verdadera esencia de la obra. La pieza, entonces, se puede convertir en el mejor de los casos, en una buena crónica moderna pero su temática pasará desapercibida, descontextualizada. Ante el problema de la modernización superficial, surge la invitación a realizar el montaje shakespeareano bajo la perspectiva de una verdadera contemporaneidad, la cual buscará compenetrar la temática de la obra con el contexto social del público. La coincidencia se vuelve un resultado feliz cuando el público encuentra en escena una problemática en la cual se reconoce y se identifica.

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Este trabalho tem como objetivo propor um diálogo entre a leitura do Quixote em contexto escolar e os estudos literários, por meio da análise do processo de transferência da obra canônica de Miguel de Cervantes para o sistema literário infantil. Apontamos, neste percurso, as principais questões, enfrentadas tanto por adaptadores da obra quanto por educadores, no que tange à complexa tarefa de colocar a obra ao alcance dos leitores infantojuvenis. Esta pesquisa permite discutir aspectos textuais, históricos e culturais das adaptações, além de sugerir uma abordagem prática da introdução do Quixote em contexto escolar que estimule o empoderamento do leitor infantojuvenil, resgatando seu papel de leitor ativo na própria narrativa cervantina. Palavras-chave: Dom Quixote de la Mancha, Escolarização da leitura, Ensino de espanhol, Adaptação, Literatura infantojuvenil, Formação do leitor, Empoderamento do leitor, Literatura espanhola século de ouro, Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), Recepção de Quixote / This research aims to propose a dialogue between the reading of Quixote in the school context and the literary studies, analyzing it by the process of transferring the Miguel de Cervantes canonical book to the childrens literary system. We focus on the main issues, faced by adapters and educators, in the complex task of providing the work to the childrens readers. This thesis allows us to discuss textual, historical and cultural aspects of the adaptations, as well as it suggests a practical approach to use of the Quixote in the school context, stimulating the empowerment of the childrens reader, and resignifying their active role in the Cervantes narrative.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo propor um diálogo entre a leitura do Quixote em contexto escolar e os estudos literários, por meio da análise do processo de transferência da obra canônica de Miguel de Cervantes para o sistema literário infantil. Apontamos, neste percurso, as principais questões, enfrentadas tanto por adaptadores da obra quanto por educadores, no que tange à complexa tarefa de colocar a obra ao alcance dos leitores infantojuvenis. Esta pesquisa permite discutir aspectos textuais, históricos e culturais das adaptações, além de sugerir uma abordagem prática da introdução do Quixote em contexto escolar que estimule o empoderamento do leitor infantojuvenil, resgatando seu papel de leitor ativo na própria narrativa cervantina. Palavras-chave: Dom Quixote de la Mancha, Escolarização da leitura, Ensino de espanhol, Adaptação, Literatura infantojuvenil, Formação do leitor, Empoderamento do leitor, Literatura espanhola século de ouro, Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), Recepção de Quixote / This research aims to propose a dialogue between the reading of Quixote in the school context and the literary studies, analyzing it by the process of transferring the Miguel de Cervantes canonical book to the childrens literary system. We focus on the main issues, faced by adapters and educators, in the complex task of providing the work to the childrens readers. This thesis allows us to discuss textual, historical and cultural aspects of the adaptations, as well as it suggests a practical approach to use of the Quixote in the school context, stimulating the empowerment of the childrens reader, and resignifying their active role in the Cervantes narrative.

Caliban, the ultimate figure of linguistic and racial indeterminacy in The Tempest, became for African-American writers a symbol of colonial fears of rebellion against oppression and southern fears of black male sexual aggression. My dissertation thus explores what I call the "Calibanic Quadrangle" in essays and novels by Anna Julia Cooper, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins. The figure of Caliban allows these authors to inflect the sentimental structure of the novel, to elevate Calibanic utterance to what Cooper calls "crude grandeur and exalted poesy," and to reveal the undercurrent of anxiety in nineteenth-century American attempts to draw rigid racial boundaries. The Calibanic Quadrangle enables this thorough critique because it allows the black woman writer to depict the oppression of the "Other," southern fears of black sexuality, the division between early black and white women's issues, and the enduring innocence of the progressive, educated, black female hero ~ all within the legitimized boundaries of the Shakespearean text, which provides literary authority to the minority writer. I call the resulting Shakespearean intertextuality a Quadrangle because in each of these African-American works a Caliban figure, a black man or "tragic mulatto" who was once "petted" and educated, struggles within a hostile environment of slavery and racism ruled by the Prospero figure, the wielder of "white magic," who controls reproduction, fears miscegenation, and enforces racial hierarchy. The Miranda figure, associated with the womb and threatened by the specter of miscegenation, advocates slavery and perpetuates the hostile structure. The Ariel figure, graceful and ephemeral, usually the "tragic mulatta" and a slave, desires her freedom and complements the Caliban figure. Each novel signals the presence of the paradigm by naming at least one character from The Tempest (Caliban in Cooper's A Voice from the South; "Mirandy" in Harper's Iola Leroy; Prospero in Hopkins's Contending Forces; and Ariel in Hopkins's Hagar's Daughter).

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Breyten Breytenbach's Afrikaans translation of William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus is a little known member of the corpus of Afrikaans Shakespeare plays. Published without annotations in South Africa in 1970 and performed in Cape Town in the same year, it has never been performed again and the text has attracted no academic review or led to any subsequent editions. However, situated in 1970 in the heyday of the Apartheid regime, the play's production broke attendance records in Cape Town and was accompanied by substantial public controversy. In this thesis, the author analyses Breytenbach's translation in order to determine whether the translator had an ideological agenda in performing the translation. The analysis is based on a preliminary discussion of culture and ideology in translation, and then uses the Skopostheorie methodology of Hans J. Vermeer (as developed by Christiane Nord) to assess the translation situation and the target text. The target text has been analysed on both a socio-political and microstructural level. The summary outcome of the analysis is that the translator may possibly have tried to promote an anti-Apartheid ideology by translating the play. The outcome is based on several contextual factors such as the socio-political situation in South Africa in which the translated play was published and performed, the translator's stated opposition to the Apartheid system, the choice of Titus Andronicus for translation and production, and to a lesser extent the level of public controversy that accompanied the target text's production in the theatre. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Breyten Breytenbach se Afrikaanse vertaling van William Shakespeare se Titus Andronicus is 'n min bekende eksemplaar van die versameling Shakespeare toneelstukke in Afrikaans. Dit is sonder enige annotasies in 1970 in Suid-Afrika uitgegee, en is dieselfde jaar in Kaapstad opgevoer. Sedertdien is dit nooit weer opgevoer nie, en die teks het geen akademiese kritiek ontlok nie. Die teks is ook nooit weer herdruk nie. Maar in 1970, tydens die toppunt van die Apartheidregime, het hierdie toneelstuk se opvoering bywoningsrekords oortref en dit is deur aansienlike openbare omstredenheid gekenmerk. In dié tesis ontleed die skrywer Breytenbach se vertaling om te bepaal of die vertaler 'n ideologiese agenda in die vertaling van die toneelstuk gehad het. Die ontleding word op 'n voorlopige bespreking van kultuur en ideologie in die vertaalproses gegrond, en maak dan gebruik van die Skopostheorie van Hans J. Vermeer (soos verwerk deur Christiane Nord) om die omstandighede ten tyde van die vertaalproses sowel as die doelteks self te ontleed. Die doelteks is op sowel sosiaalpolitiese as mikrostrukturele vlak ontleed. Die samevattende uitkoms van die ontleding is dat die vertaler moontlik 'n anti-Apartheid ideologie probeer bevorder het deur hierdie toneelstuk te vertaal. Hierdie uitkoms is gegrond op verskeie samehangende faktore, soos die sosiaalpolitiese omstandighede in Suid-Afrika waarin die toneelstuk uitgegee en opgevoer is, die vertaler se vermelde teenkanting teen die Apartheidstelsel, die keuse van Titus Andronicus vir vertaling en opvoering, en tot 'n mindere mate die vlak van openbare omstredenheid wat gepaard gegaan het met die doelteks se opvoering in die teater.

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Since Benoit de Sainte-Maure's creation of the Briseida story, Criseida has evolved as one of the most infamous heroines in European literature, an inconstant femme fatale. This study analyzes four different receptions of the Criseida story with a special emphasis on the antifeminist tradition. An interesting pattern arises from the ways in which four British writers render Criseida: Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Crisevde is a response to the antifeminist tradition of the story (particularly to Giovanni Boccaccio's II Filostrato); Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid is a direct response to Chaucer's poem; William Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida aligns itself with the antifeminist tradition, but in a different way; and John Dryden's Troilus and Cressida or Truth Found Too Late is a straight rewriting of Shakespeare's play. These works themselves form an interesting canon within the whole tradition. All four writers are not only readers of the continually evolving story of Criseida but also critics, writers, and literary historians in the Jaussian sense. They critique their predecessors' works, write what they have conceived from the tradition of the story, and reinterpret the old works in that historical context.