Seminars

Seminar 1 - Screen Shakespeare, French Theory and Critical Reception

Seminar leaders: Anne-Marie Costantini-Cornède (Université Paris Descartes/Paris 3 Sorbonne-Nouvelle), Pascale Drouet (Université Poitiers)

This seminar proposes to address the impact of French cinema criticism on screen Shakespeare studies following two complementary perspectives, theory and critical reception.The first perspective will consider the impact of the scientific research of famous French theorists such as André Bazin, Christian Metz (Film Language: A Semiotics of Cinema…), Jacques Aumont, Alain Bergala, Michel Marie, Marc Vernet (Aesthetics of Film) or Gilles Deleuze (The Movement-Image; The Time-Image), whose works are increasingly translated and resorted to in the field of international Shakespeare studies, along with those of French philosophers such as Derrida or Foucault. What can such ‘tough’ theorists bring to the study of Shakespeare films in terms of critical approach to adaptation, new readings of the plays or visions of Renaissance worlds? Is such theoretical criticism always relevant and, if so, for which kind of adaptations? ‘Classics’ (Olivier, Welles, Kozintsev), foreign or period films, basically narrative-based, ‘straightforward’ adaptations (Branagh, Parker, Nunn, Radford), modernisations (Luhrmann, Loncraine) or more oblique, conceptual films (Pasolini, Jarman, Greenaway, Godard)? And if so, why? Is such criticism more adapted to specific genres – provided generic classification is regarded as relevant for films?
The second perspective will examine the specifically French critical reception of Shakespearean films (Branagh’s or Stoppard/Madden’s for instance) by specialised, but popular, journals such as Positif, Cahiers du cinéma or Les Inrockuptibles, and the – sometimes very critical indeed—stances adopted. Are these critics ‘tough’ purists, even more demanding in their expectations than Shakespeare scholars themselves, and could this precisely relate to a form of theoretical, French critical nourishment?
The seminar is open to international specialists, whether they be specialized in Shakespeare studies and/or Shakespeare films, or other films, but who, as they resort to such criticism, will endeavour to apply their knowledge in relation to Shakespeare adaptations. The two (theoretical or film-based) types of approach may be blended, which in turn could entail useful comparisons.

Seminar leaders: Anne-Marie Costantini-Cornède (Université Paris Descartes/Paris 3 Sorbonne-Nouvelle, amcornede@club-internet.fr), Pascale Drouet (Université Poitiers, pascale.drouet@univ-poitiers.fr)

Anne-Marie Costantini-Cornède is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Paris Descartes (Paris V). She is a member of PRISMES research centre (EA 4398 Paris 3 Sorbonne-Nouvelle). She has written a Ph.D. on the aesthetics of representation in Shakespeare screen adaptations and she is the author of several articles and book chapters on classic adaptations and modernisations (Olivier, Welles, Branagh, Loncraine, Luhrmann, Brozel…), analyses of trans-aesthetic links between cinema and painting (Jarman, Greenaway) and socio-cultural issues in historical films (Axel, Hytner, Eyre, Radford) or transnational ones (Kaurismäki, Abela, Kurosawa). She has published in international journals and books, SFS, Etudes Anglaises, Lisa e-journal, Ligeia, Shakespeare en devenir, P.U. Sorbonne, P.U. Rennes, P.U. Rouen et Le Havre, The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts, Michel Houdiard, L’Harmattan, or currently for Pisa Editions (Italy).

Pascale Drouet is Professor at the University of Poitiers. She has an interest in the margins/centre dialectics in early modern England and in Shakespeare studies, including 20th-21st-century adaptations. She has published monographs on Shakespeare and his contemporaries, among which Mise au ban et abus de pouvoir. Essai sur trois pièces tragiques de Shakespeare (PUPS, 2012)and De la filouterie dans l’Angleterre de la Renaissance (PUM, 2013), was the textual editor for Norton Shakespeare Henry VIII (Norton, 2016) and lately co-edited Shakespeare au risque de la philosophie (Hermann, 2017). She is the General Editor of the online journal Shakespeare en devenir.

Seminar 2 - Royal Bodies in Shakespearean Adaptations on Screen

Seminar leaders: Anna Blackwell (De Montfort University) and Marina Gerzic (The University of Western Australia)

In Hilary Mantel’s controversial essay ‘Royal Bodies’ (London Review of Books, Vol. 35, No. 4, 2013), viewed largely as a critique of the current British royal family, Mantel focuses on the intersection of monarchy and bodies – mostly of royal women – arguing that the concept of monarchy is constructed in such a way that the public tends to see royals as superior and untouchable, as something to be admired and looked at. This seminar will examine how Shakespeare and adaptations of his plays on screen engage with the idea of the royal body. Moving beyond Mantel’s limited analysis of the appearance of royal bodies, this seminar will also consider the acts that these royal bodies undertake: political machinations, deception, murder, and conquest; as well as acts of love, heroism and creation. This seminar will also consider the political significance of the royal body in pre/post-Brexit Britain and the consolidation of on-screen royalty in digital media and fan cultures.

Seminar leaders: Anna Blackwell (De Montfort University, anna.blackwell@dmu.ac.uk), Marina Gerzic (The University of Western Australia, mgerzic@gmail.com)

Dr Marina Gerzic works for the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at The University of Western Australia, in both research and administration roles. She also works as the Executive Administrator for the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies and as the editorial assistant for the academic journal Parergon. She has published articles on film and adaptation theory, Shakespeare, pedagogy, cinematic music, cultural studies, science fiction, comics and graphic novels, and children’s literature. She is the co-editor (along with Aidan Norrie) of From Medievalism to Early-Modernism: Adapting the English Past (Forthcoming Routledge 2019).

Dr Anna Blackwell is a lecturer in the Centre for Adaptations, De Montfort University, where she works on the intersections between Shakespeare and contemporary popular culture. She has published in Adaptation and co-edited a recent edition of the Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance on the British screenwriter, Andrew Davies. Her research into Shakespeare and popular digital culture can also be found in the edited collections Broadcast Your Shakespeare, Adaptation, Awards Culture and the Value of Prestige and Shakespeare’s Cultural Capital. Her first monograph, Digital Shakespeareans: Adapting Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century, is due for publication with Palgrave in late 2018.

Seminar 3 - “Who the Bard? Me the Bard!” (Upstart Crow, ep. 4, BBC Two, 2016): Shakespeare as Character on Screen in the Digital Era

Seminar leaders: Sylvaine Bataille (Université de Rouen Normandie) and Laura Goudet (Université de Rouen Normandie)

In this seminar we propose to take a fresh look at the representations of Shakespeare as a character on screen, twenty years after the release of blockbuster romantic comedy Shakespeare in Love (dir. John Madden, 1998), which imprinted a lasting image of Shakespeare in popular culture while also generating a significant amount of scholarship (R. Burt, 2000; C. Lehmann, 2002; M. Anderegg, 2003; Franssen, 2014); and two years after the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, which brought in its wake new screen incarnations of the playwright, such as BBC Two’s sitcom Upstart Crow (2016-present) and TNT’s short-lived Will (2017).
Not only has the range of fictional versions of Shakespeare the man in film and television greatly expanded since the end of the last century, but technological mutations have also deeply transformed their mode of consumption as well as made available and encouraged the production of a myriad of other treatments of Shakespeare as character on (computer) screen. Video-sharing platforms on the Internet serve both as archives and distributors of original content. On YouTube, for instance, viewers can watch scenes from Shakespeare in Love, previews of episodes of Upstart Crow, or the trailers of A Waste of Shame (a television film broadcast on BBC Four in 2005), Anonymous (dir. Roland Emmerich, 2011) or Bill (dir. Richard Bracewell, 2015). Cameo appearances of Shakespeare (for instance in Doctor Who or in Blackadder) are spotted, extracted from their original context and uploaded on the platform by individual users for other users to watch and comment on. Online video platforms also host sketches featuring Shakespeare, both old (Rowan Atkinson and Hugh Laurie in “Shakespeare and Hamlet”, 1989) and new (Key & Peele, “Black Theater”, 2015), and even a rap battle featuring Shakespeare (“Dr Seuss VS Shakespeare”, from the webseries Epic Rap Battles of History). Another area that appears to be of interest with regard to recent uses of Shakespeare as character is video games, for instance in The Simpsons game (2007) or Final fantasy IX (2000).
In the digital era, portrayals of the playwright on screen proliferate through variation as well as reduplication and quotation, making “Shakespeare” more than ever “a contested object of value, a body that […] remains always in motion” (D. Lanier, 2007).

Contributions to this seminar may address topics such as reverence and irreverence in the treatments of the character, the depiction of the playwright’s creative process, the treatment of the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, the recurrence of Shakespeare as a comic character, the actors interpreting the role, the impact of the format, issues related to sexuality, gender, race and class relations in the representations of Shakespeare as character. Comparative studies as well as case studies are welcome.

Seminar leaders: Sylvaine Bataille (Université de Rouen Normandie, sylvaine.brennetot@univ-rouen.fr), Laura Goudet (Université de Rouen Normandie, laura.goudet@univ-rouen.fr), Anaïs Pauchet (doctoral student, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, anais.pauchet@laposte.net)

Sylvaine Bataille is a Lecturer in English literature and film studies in the English department at the University of Rouen Normandie, France and a member of the research group ERIAC. She works on the questions of appropriation, adaptation, and reference in 16th and 17th century English literature and in today’s popular culture, with a focus on drama television series and screen adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. Her current research is on the Shakespearean intertext in TV series and her publications include articles on the Shakespearean legacy in “Roman” TV productions and on the appropriation of Hamlet in Sons of Anarchy. http://eriac.univ-rouen.fr/author/sylvaine-bataille/

Laura Goudet is a Lecturer in English linguistics in the English department at the University of Rouen Normandie, France. She specializes in discourse analysis in digital culture, in media and gender studies, as well as in English dialectology.

Anaïs Pauchet is a doctoral student at the University of Le Havre Normandie, under the supervision of Sarah Hatchuel (University of Le Havre Normandie) and Sylvaine Bataille (University of Rouen Normandie). Her thesis focuses on the various forms of references to Shakespeare in American network television series. She has recently co-written several entries on TV series with Shakespearean echoes for the Stanford Global Shakespeare Encyclopedia (to be published online).

Seminar 4 - Whose Screen is it Anyway? Shakespeare in digital Interactive media

Seminar Leaders: Ronan Paterson (Teesside University), Zora Martin (University of Freiburg/Scripps College)

Successive generations have constantly applied new technological approaches to rediscover and reconfigure Shakespeare’s work for their own times, as human beings have striven to create multi-sensory means of examining essential human questions and ethical dilemmas. Nowhere do we find more of these questions than in Shakespeare, whose stories turn these questions into emotionally engaging narratives. Many new and different narrative mediations have appeared in recent years but some basic questions remain unaltered. The “how” we do it, the methodological approaches, change almost daily, but the fundamental “why” remains unchanged.
Currently digital technologies potentially offer the widest range of options for fresh approaches. In the last 20 years, the medium of display on screens has changed, but less so than the definition the “screen” itself. No longer is viewing a collective, fixed time activity. Personal digital screens are available to viewers almost constantly. This radically changes the specificity of the viewing experience. A personal screen gives the viewer complete autonomy over how, where, and when he or she watches, and in which format, language, and order of scenes. Additionally this brings with it, in comparison with other media accessed digitally, a viewer expectation of increased agency, a transformation into participants. If the participant can make choices about the format, why not about the story?
Murray (1997, 2017) has theorised ways in which digital technologies offer the participant immersion, agency and transformation, and has demonstrated how authorship has different meanings in a virtual world. Ryan (2001, 2015) has discussed “the dream of the immersive, interactive narrative” (2015). From a gaming perspective Bogost (2011) and before him Costykian (1994) have challenged both ludists and narratologists to find meaningful application of these technologies to literature. Underlying these questions are theoretical concepts examined by Baudrillard (1994, 1996,1997) and, earlier, Benjamin (1936). But whereas different aspects of these questions have been extensively discussed, the combination of elements, and the application to Shakespeare, have yet to be thoroughly examined. Areas of exploration, amongst many others, might include the following:
If participants have agency, how do we ensure narrative coherence? Does a world in which participants have agency remain Shakespeare’s? In an immersive Shakespeare world, who does the participant become? At whom might such digital renderings be aimed? Do they sit within the province of education, or are they part of the entertainment industry, for which Shakespeare’s plays were originally conceived? Who are the target audience? What can we reasonably expect to achieve? What can these digital technologies genuinely offer to Shakespearean production and reception? Are we hoping to use digital as a gateway to create readers and live audiences, or is digital Shakespeare something else entirely?

Seminar Leaders: Ronan Paterson, Teesside University, R.paterson@tees.ac.uk; Zora Martin, University of Freiburg/Scripps College, wren.sister@gmail.com

Zora E. Martin is from Switzerland and studied at the University of Freiburg and Scripps College. She has presented at two Asian Shakespeare Association conferences, the Shakespeare 400 conference in Elsinore, the World Shakespeare Congress, and the British Shakespeare Association conference in Belfast. She has been working on themes in inspirational speeches such as those of Hotspur and Henry V. Her latest research project has been around themes in inspirational speeches in the cinema and how those affect the brain and choices people make.

Having previously worked for many years as an actor and director Ronan Paterson is Principal Lecturer in the School of Computing, Media and the Arts at Teesside University in England, where he heads a research team exploring the interaction of agency and narrative coherence in digital remediations of Shakespeare. He is a frequent presenter at international conferences, and has published and broadcast widely on Shakespeare in Performance, Shakespeare in Film and other subjects from performance history.

Seminar 5 - Shakespeare on Screen: Romeo and Juliet

Seminar leaders: Victoria Bladen (University of Queensland), Sarah Hatchuel (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3), Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3)

Romeo and Juliet is one of the plays that have led to the most numerous productions, adaptations, screen allusions and quotations, from the first days of cinema to the digital age. This seminar will explore the specificity of this mythical play and the multiple ways in which it has been recycled, appropriated and parodied on screen. From Stuart Blackton’s 1908 silent film to the Twilight saga series advertised as a new Romeo and Juliet, from George Cukor’s 1936 film to Baz Luhrmann’s popular Romeo+Juliet (1996), from West Side Story (1961) to Franco Zeffirelli’s movie (1968), from The Animated Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet (TV, Russia and UK, 1992) to The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride (1998), from Tromeo and Juliet (1996) to Gnomeo and Juliet (2011), the play has generated so many resurgences that avatars of Romeo and Juliet can be spotted on screen all over the world. What do such films as Lev Arnshtam’s Russian Romeo i Dzhulyetta (1955), Cheah Chee-Kong's Singaporean film Chicken Rice War (2000) or Bollywood romantic dramas like Mansoor Khan’s Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988) or Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Ram-Leela (2013) do with the play? How is the play translated and adapted to various cultural backgrounds world-wide? This seminar will explore how screen versions re-construct Romeo and Juliet and project what the play ‘is’ and ‘means’. It will also aim to provide theoretical tools that will help to approach the play as an object of filmic ‘transfiction’.

Selected essays will be part of a book proposal we will submit to Cambridge University Press as part of the ‘Shakespeare on screen’ collection.

Seminar leaders: Victoria Bladen (University of Queensland, Victoria.bladen@uqconnect.edu.au), Sarah Hatchuel (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, s_hatchuel@hotmail.com), Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, Nathalie.vienne-guerrin@univ-montp.3.fr)

Victoria Bladen teaches in literary studies and adaptation at The University of Queensland, Australia. She has published four Shakespearean text guides, on Measure for Measure (2015), Henry IV Part 1 (2012), Julius Caesar (2011) and Romeo and Juliet (2015), and co-edited Shakespeare on Screen: Macbeth (2013). She has published articles in several volumes of the Shakespeare on Screen series and is on the editorial board for the Shakespeare on Screen in Francophonia project in France (http://www.shakscreen.org/).

Sarah Hatchuel is Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 (France) and President of the Société Française Shakespeare. She has written extensively on adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays (Shakespeare and the Cleopatra/Caesar Intertext: Sequel, Conflation, Remake, 2011; Shakespeare, from Stage to Screen, 2004; A Companion to the Shakespearean Films of Kenneth Branagh, 2000) and on television series (Lost: Fiction vitale, 2013; Rêves et séries américaines: la fabrique d’autres mondes, 2015). She is general editor of the Shakespeare on Screen collection (with Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin) and of the online journal TV/Series.

Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin is Professor in Shakespeare studies at the University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, Vice President of the Société Française Shakespeare and director of the ‘Institut de Recherche sur la Renaissance, l’âge Classique et les Lumières’ (IRCL, UMR 5186 CNRS). She is co-editor-in-chief of the international journal Cahiers Élisabéthains and co-director (with Patricia Dorval) of the Shakespeare on Screen in Francophonia Database (shakscreen.org). She has published The Unruly Tongue in Early Modern England, Three Treatises (2012) and is the author of Shakespeare’s Insults: A Pragmatic Dictionary (2016). She is co-editor, with Sarah Hatchuel, of the Shakespeare on Screen series.

Seminar 6 - Shakespeare on Screen in Francophonia

Seminar leaders: Patricia Dorval (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3/CNRS) ; Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3/CNRS)

The seminar aims at studying French-speaking Shakespeare films (filmed theatrical performances for television, TV adaptations, film adaptations) as well as allusions to Shakespeare and his works.
From the earliest silent films to more recent films like The Artist (2011), Shakespeare has been present in French cinema through adaptation or allusion.
Contributors are invited to address one or more specific French or French-speaking adaptations or one of the following issues:
- How is Shakespeare dealt with in francophone films?
- Which francophone film directors recurrently draw on Shakespeare?
- How are Shakespearean allusions received by a French-speaking audience?
- Is there a French specificity in the way Shakespeare citations are handled?
- How are Shakespeare’s plays adapted on French film and TV screens?
- What place does Shakespeare hold on French screens?

The papers will be considered for publication on the website www.shakscreen.org which constitutes both a database and a refereed e-publication.

Seminar leaders: Patricia Dorval (IRCL, UMR5186, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 ; CNRS, patricia.dorval@univ-montp3.fr) ; Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin (IRCL, UMR5186, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 , CNRS, nathalie.vienne-guerrin@univ-montp3.fr)

Patricia Dorval is associate professor and a member of the Institute for Research on the Renaissance, the Neo-classical Age and the Enlightenment (IRCL, UMR5186, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3; CNRS, France). Her research encompasses English Renaissance, Rhetoric, Cinema and Classical Myths. Her Ph.D. dissertation concentrates on a semiotic analysis of Shakespeare film adaptations, centering on the issue of vision in its negativity. It examines mostly tropes – metaphor, simile, metonymy, metalepsis, synecdoche, synesthesia, etc. – which all substitute one signifier for another, and devises a rhetoric of absence calling for a hermeneutics of signs. She has contributed some scholarly papers both in France and internationally on the rhetoric of negation in Shakespeare films. She has recently worked on a collaborative scientific edition of Thomas Heywood’s Troia Britanica (1609) and is currently studying Shakespeare allusions in French films. She is co-editing with Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin the website Shakespeare on Screen in Francophonia (http://shakscreen.org).

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