Graduate Student, School of English, Communication, and Philosophy
Postgraduate Tutor in English Literature & Cultural Criticism
Thesis Title: Untimely Aesthetics: Anachronism and Presence in Shakespeare
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Professor Richard Wilson
Dr Melanie Bigold |
About
RESEARCH
My thesis looks at ideas of presence and performance in Shakespeare and elsewhere. Anachronisms, in literary texts and in popular culture, question common assumptions about presence. This ontological questioning is a characteristic feature of Shakespeare’s work - and especially in the late Elizabethan plays. Thus, the self-reflexive historicity of 'Henry V' or 'Julius Caesar' prompts reflections on the mediated nature of literature and its intrinsic performativity. Any invocation of the past inevitably relies on mental constructs and archetypes that preclude artistic immediacy. By meditating on their own failure to conjure up presence, Shakespeare’s plays turn this structural defect into a dramatic asset. Untimeliness appears as a key factor in the aesthetics of Shakespeare’s drama and in the modern visual arts.
PUBLICATIONS
--> Articles
• 'Looking Through Shakespeare: Žižek and the Interpassive Subject', for 'English Studies' (forthcoming, 2012)
• 'Shakespeare's Politics of Invisibility: Power and Ideology in "The Tempest"', for 'International Journal of Žižek Studies' (4:1, 2010)
• 'Forêt Nagasaki', for 'Gaia Scienza', vol. 4 (2011)
• 'The Da Vinci Skull', for 'Gaia Scienza', vol. 3 (2010)
• 'La professionnalisation de l'absurde' (with Dr Rabbit), for 'Gaia Scienza', vol. 1 (2010)
--> Book/theatre reviews
• Review of 'Macbeth', directed by Declan Donnellan for Cheek by Jowl at the Silk Street Theatre, Barbican Centre, London, March–April 2010, for 'Shakespeare' (7:1, 2011)
• Review of Jeremy Tambling, 'On Anachronism', for 'Textual Practice' (25:4, 2011)
CONFERENCE PAPERS
• 'Medieval and Early Modern Authorship' (June/July 2010), University of Geneva
> ‘Towards his design / Moves like a ghost’: Shakespeare’s Self-erasure in 'Macbeth'
• 'Visions & Visionaries' (October 2010), Cardiff University
> 'Observation Strange': Shakespearean Theories of Vision
OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS
• 'And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you'
A personal outlook on Nietzsche's aphorism ('SAGEBITES: reflections on quotations for life')
Contact Information
| Address: | Cardiff School of English, Communication and Philosophy |
