Rome in Shakespeare's World (PDF)

The thirteen essays in this collection investigate the different ways in which Shakespeare took advantage of the contrast between the mythologized ancient values of a Rome long past and the sense of their decline: a crisis which was already there, in his Augustan or even later Latin sources – and which he appropriates dramatically in his theatre, as a discoursive pattern, to make it interact anachronistically with the unsettling context of his own early modern times. Perhaps thus metamorphosing the mythical core of Rome and its history into what is – tragically – spectrally meaningful and returning.

I tredici saggi di questo volume indagano i diversi modi in cui Shakespeare ha rappresentato il contrasto tra i valori mitologici antichi del lungo passato di Roma e il loro declino: una crisi che era già lì, nelle fonti augustee o in quelle successive tardo latine – e di cui il drammaturgo si appropria nel suo teatro, come schema discorsivo, per farlo interagire anacronisticamente con il contesto inquietante dei tempi a lui contemporanei.