Language and Otherness in Renaissance Culture (2025)

La Langue de Shakespeare, l’accent de Tony Harrison: Quand matter rime avec water

Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare, 2014

Dans son poème « Them & [uz] », Tony Harrison, poète né à Leeds en 1937, se remémore les critiques et moqueries que lui adressaient ses professeurs à cause de son accent du Nord de l'Angleterre, à la prononciation éloignée des normes cultivées (« RP »). Harrison se trouvait ainsi cantonné aux rôles comiques dans les représentations des pièces de Shakespeare auxquelles il participait, jugé incapable de rendre justice à la beauté des vers du barde national. En partant de la révolte phonétique de Harrison contre la « dictature » RP, cet article met en parallèle son éloignement géographique d'une langue policée et la distance temporelle qui nous sépare de la langue élisabéthaine afin de réévaluer le statut de Shakespeare en tant qu'icône de l'anglicité bien-éduquée. Prononcer Shakespeare avec l'accent du Nord permettra ainsi de s'interroger sur le statut des prononciations régionales à l'époque élisabéthaine et de repenser la différence entre culture élevée et culture populaire. This article takes as its starting point Tony Harrison's poem "Them & [uz]", in which the poet from Leeds (b. 1937) recalls that his teachers would mock his non-RP Northern accent when he was a pupil. Deemed incapable of doing justice to the beauty of the Bard's lines, Harrison thus had to be content with playing comic parts in performances of Shakespeare's plays. Tony Harrison's revolt against RP phonetic norms triggers a reflection on how his geographical/linguistic marginalisation can serve as an analogue to our temporal distance from the original performances of Shakespeare's text: is the Bard a symbol of RP and its cultural hierarchies? The meeting of Shakespeare's tongue and Tony Harrison's accent will allow us to investigate the status of regional pronunciations in the Early Modern era as well as to question the difference between highbrow and popular culture.

‘Old custom’. Shakespeare’s ambivalent anthropology

Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare, 2015

DUKE SENIOR. Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile, Hath not old custom made this life more sweet Than that of painted pomp? […] Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

Social identity in Shakespeare's plays, a quantitative study

2017

And That's True Too: New Essays on King Lear

2009

This collection of provocative new essays, mainly by French scholars, on Shakespeare's great tragedy, focuses on linguistic, aesthetic and philosophical issues with specific attention paid to the dimension of early modern desire, sexuality and gender relations. King Lear is here re-examined in the perspective of Lucrece, Montaigne, Renaissance medicine and anatomy, the grotesque, myth and imagery as well as negative theology. It is hoped that this will serve to update our approaches to this elusive, undecided play, neither Christian nor as completely nihilistic as some critics have argued, which nevertheless remains quite popular on French and English stages alike.

Falstaff, du «cerf gras» au «pourpoint rembourré de paille»: les paradoxes de l’excès

Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare, 2007

Tous droits de traduction, de reproduction et d'adaptation réservés pour tous les pays

Shakespeare et la géographie imaginaire de l’Europe

Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare, 2005

Tous droits de traduction, de reproduction et d'adaptation réservés pour tous les pays

Transtextuality, (Re)sources and Transmission of the Celtic Culture Trough the Shakespearean Repertory

2019

This dissertation explores the resurgence of motifs related to Celtic cultures in Shakespeare’s plays, that is to say the way the pre-Christian and pre-Roman cultures of the British Isles permeate the dramatic works of William Shakespeare. Such motifs do not always evidently appear on the surface of the text. They sometimes do, but most often, they require a thorough in depth exploration. This issue has thus far remained relatively unexplored; in this sense we can talk of a ‘construction’ of meaning. However, the cultures in question belong to an Ancient time, therefore, we may accept the idea of a ‘reconstruction’ of a forgotten past. Providing a rigorous definition of the term ‘Celtic’ this study offers to examine in detail the presence of motifs, first in the Chronicles that Shakespeare could have access to, and takes into account the notions of orality and discourse, inherent to the study of a primarily oral culture. The figure of King Arthur and the matter of Britain, seen as t...

Les Rites de passage dans The Belman of London de Thomas Dekker

XVII-XVIII. Revue de la société d'études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, 2006

XVII-XVIII. Revue de la société d'études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles Les Rites de passage dans The Belman of London de Thomas Dekker Pascale Drouet Résumé The Bellman of London est la première contribution de Thomas Dekker au genre du «roguery pamphlet», illustré par John Awdeley, Thomas Harman et Robert Greene. Il y révèle les rituels de l'(anti) société secrète des va-nu-pieds, «the Ragged Regiment», «the damned fraternity». L'adoubement du novice et les bacchanales qui le suivent mêlent de façon burlesque traditions chrétiennes et topoi des romans de chevalerie. Les règles de cette confrérie révèlent les stratégies de projection et de réappropriation mises en oeuvre par Dekker pour recréer les phases d'un rite de passage. Elles posent aussi la question du rôle joué par le narrateur-voyeur-délateur, et celle des raisons qui sous-tendent la divulgation d'une initiation par procuration.

Vertigo (from Renaissance Themes: Essays presented to Arun Kumar Das Gupta)

Renaissance Themes: Essays presented to Arun Kumar Das Gupta, 2009

Everyone remembers that dizzying passage in King Lear when Edgar recounts to his father the effects of leaning over a non-existent cliff. What we recall is the stupendous clarity of the visualization, heralded by that line which 'haunted' Keats, 'Hark, do you hear the sea?' 1 Edgar speaks of the fear of falling but, as commentators since Johnson have noticed, 'diffuses his attention to distinct objects': 2 Halfway down Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head. The fishermen that walk upon the beach Appear like mice, and yon tall anchoring barque Diminished to her cock; her cock, a buoy Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge That on th'unnumbered idle pebble chafes, Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more, Lest my brain turn and the deficient sight Topple down headlong. 3 John Bayley picks up Johnson's comment, 'the crows impede your fall', and argues that what the imagination is doing here is not plummeting to a depth 1

La réception des comédies de Shakespeare en Europe au XIXe siècle

2016

Cet article etudie la facon dont les comedies de Shakespeare sont progressivement decouvertes en Europe, a la faveur de traduction ou de representations.