Consciously or unconsciously an author's literary work reflects his experiences and his reaction to these experiences. Because the personal history of the author is inseparable from his works, a study of The Cenci would be incomplete without a review of the background of Shelley's life, some of the philosophies which interested him, and the political and social movements with which he concerned himself.

Published also as thesis (PH. D.) Columbia university, 1908. / Also available in digital form on the Internet Archive Web site.

Published also as Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1908.

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The thesis is divided in two sections; the first section consists in a critical document while the second presents my own creative writing, a play intitled Le Foyer. My use of theatrical writing in Le Foyer sought to privilege certain litterary techniques and dramatic processes elaborated by Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) in his manifesto The Theatre and his Double (1938). The thesis' theoretical section explores various issues at stake in my creative writing exercise: the link between the play Les Cenci and Artaud's metaphysic is questionned. I aimed to demonstrate how Les Cenci is an improbable example of the concept of Theatre of Cruelty. I stressed the liberties the playwright has taken with his theory when putting it into practice in a first attempt to create total theatre.

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On the heels of an older generation of Romantic poets concerned with the individual’s role in creating reality, Percy Shelley defines perception as a mandatory building block for countering an external physical world that is hostile to the individual. Consequently, the question of perception, both how it is defined and how it can be influenced, plays an important role in Shelley’s works that focus on political and social change. The question of perception, as it relates to the individual and as it relates to social change, is brought to the forefront in Prometheus Unbound and his drama, The Cenci.

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<p>This study focuses on two incarnations of the Cenci legend: Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1819 verse drama <em>The Cenci</em> and George Elliott Clarke and James Rolfe’s 1998 chamber opera <em>Beatrice Chancy</em>. Shelley composed <em>The Cenci</em> after he discovered an Italian manuscript recounting the life of Beatrice Cenci who, after being raped by her father, plotted the murder of the debauched patriarch and was subsequently executed for parricide. Nearly two centuries later, Clarke and Rolfe created <em>Beatrice Chancy</em>, an Africadianized adaptation of the Cenci legend inspired by Shelley’s play. This study investigates they way in which multiple performance genres re-embody history in order to contest collective memory and reconfigure concepts of nationhood and citizenship. It examines the principles of nineteenth-century closet drama and the way in which Shelley's play questions systems of despotic, patriarchal power by raising issues of speech and silence, public and private. This is followed by a consideration of how Clarke and Rolfe's transcultural adaptation uncovers similar issues in Canadian history, where discourses of domestic abuse come to reflect public constructs of citizenship. Particularly this study examines how, through the immediacy of operatic performance and the powerful voice of the diva, <em>Beatrice Chancy</em> contests Canada’s systematic silencing of a violent history of slavery and oppression.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)