CULTURAL AMBIGUITY AS IRRECONCILABLE ANTAGONISM IN SHAKESPEARE’S MAJOR TRAGEDIES

Authors

  • CODRIN LIVIU CUŢITARU “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași, Department of English Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.62229/aubllslxxii/1_23/1

Keywords:

Shakespeare, literary sources, cultural antagonism, tragedy, tragic theory, identity

Abstract

This paper aims at exploring the cultural ambiguity which William Shakespeare remarkably extracts from the sources of his major plays, turning it into an essential instrument of the tragic and the tragedy, i.e. into a form of irreconcilable conflict, antagonism. Therefore, what in normal/modern circumstances would appear as “plagiarism” becomes here a token of artistic genius and brilliant creation, the very nucleus of the tragic construction. We approach, from this angle, the four outstanding tragedies Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth, intending to clearly define each one’s cultural (that is, tragic) conflict. Likewise, the sources of these masterpieces, Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum, François de Belleforest’s Histoires Tragiques (for Hamlet), Cinthio’s Un Capitano Moro (for Othello), the Celtic legend Leir of Britain (for King Lear) and Holinshed’s Chronicles… (for Macbeth), are compared to their Shakespearean “avatars”, with the purpose of displaying the way in which the asserted antagonism manifests itself at the level of the “prototype”. The outcome of the critical investigation reveals that the so-called cultural ambiguity takes various forms in Shakespeare’s plays, going from the clash of civilizations (Hamlet and Othello) to the crisis of identity (King Lear and Macbeth).

Author Biography

  • CODRIN LIVIU CUŢITARU, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași, Department of English

    CODRIN LIVIU CUŢITARU is Professor of English and American Literature at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iaşi. He was Guest IIE Researcher at the University of Texas (1993), Fulbright Visiting
    Scholar at the University of Arizona (1993-1994), Guest Professor at the University of Freiburg (1995-2000), the University of Sheffield (2002), and the University of London (2009). Cuțitaru was also a Task Force
    Member in the Coimbra Group for Doctoral Programmes at the University of Padua (2011) and the University of Gottingen (2012). He served as Director of Doctoral Studies at the University of Iaşi between
    2008 and 2012 and as Dean of the Iași Faculty of Letters (2012-2016). He is the author of more than 500 articles (academic articles, critical reviews, essays) in Romania and abroad, and of 12 books on literary history, critical theory, mentalities.

AUBLLS72-1-23-1

Downloads

Published

2024-03-29

Issue

Vol. 72 No. 1 (2023): ANALELE UNIVERSITĂŢII BUCUREŞTI LIMBI ŞI LITERATURI STRĂINE 2023 – Nr. 1

Section

Articles