Shakespeare
Seminar
Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft
Ausgabe 9 (2011)
Shakespeare’s (Un)fortunate
Travellers:
Maritime Adventures across the
Genres
http://shakespeare-gesellschaft.de/publikationen/seminar/ausgabe-9-2011.html
Shakespeare Seminar 9 (2011)
EDITORS
The Shakespeare Seminar is published under the auspices of the Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft,
Weimar, and edited by:
Christina Wald, Universität Augsburg, Fachbereich Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universitätsstr. 10,
D-86159 Augsburg ([email protected])
Felix Sprang, Universität Hamburg, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Von-Melle-Park 6,
D-20146 Hamburg ([email protected])
PUBLICATIONS FREQUENCY
Shakespeare Seminar Online is a free annual online journal. It documents papers presented at the
Academic Seminar panel of the spring conferences of the Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft. It is
intended as a publication platform especially for the younger generation of scholars. You can find the
current Call for Papers on our website.
INTERNATIONAL STANDARD SERIAL NUMBER
ISSN1612-8362
© Copyright 2011 Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft e.V.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Christina Wald and Felix Sprang .................................................................................... 1
The Young Man and the Sea: Shakespeare’s Hope of a Dry Death
Paul J.C.M. Franssen ..................................................................................................... 3
Medieval vs. Early Modern: Travel Narratives and other Genres in The Tempest
Kirsten Sandrock ........................................................................................................... 15
The Sea as an Epic Signifier
Thomas Kullmann ......................................................................................................... 26
Shipwrecks and Lost Identities in Shakespeare’s Plays: The Case of Pericles
Simonetta de Filippis. ................................................................................................... 35
The Tempest Re-Envisioned:
Encounters with the Sea in Iris Murdoch and Derek Jarman
Ursula Kluwick. ............................................................................................................ 53
Call for Statements – Shakespeare Seminar at the Shakespeare-Tage 2012 ................ 66
INTRODUCTION
BY
CHRISTINA WALD AND FELIX SPRANG
Shakespeare’s (Un)fortunate Travellers:
Maritime Adventures across the Genres
From The Comedy of Errors to The Tempest Shakespearean drama is imbued with
maritime adventure, drawing on the larger cultural appeal which oceanic spaces clearly
held for early modern travellers. Maritime adventures both connect the homely landlocked places and potentially disrupt all man-made lines of cultural connection.
Shipwreck is part of this wager, a necessary figure of the risks incurred through human
efforts to shape and forge the future, frequently enacted on the stage. Plays such as The
Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Pericles and, of course,
The Tempest explicitly point to the dangers involved in seafaring, but the spectacle of
risk also surfaces in the rhetoric of many other plays and, indeed, in many narratives
and poems whenever navigation provides a repertoire of tropes.
Plots based on maritime adventure are by no means just confined to drama, but are
frequently involved in tales and travelogues. Some of the most appealing scenes in
prose narratives, such as the romances by Sidney and Greene, in fact are scenarios of
shipwreck and have, among others, inspired Shakespeare when writing his plays.
Biblical accounts like St Paul’s shipwreck in the Acts or the tale of Jonah, too, serve as
a further source of inspiration and of figurative meaning, manifest in poems such as
Donne’s Hymn to Christ, at the Author’s Last Going Into Germany or in emblems such
as Alciato’s Spes proxima.
The papers in this volume address the question how maritime adventures travelled
from the page to the stage and back to the page. What narrative devices, what
rhetorical figures and what performative strategies are in each case used to represent
the vast illimitable spaces and the terrors of the sea which, strictly speaking, always
exceed representation? In what ways and with which terms is this problem of
representation addressed in stories, plays or poems, in specific performances or
screenings?
The contributions to this volume address these questions. Paul J.C.M. Franssen
investigates colonial myth-building in fictional texts from the 20th century that present
Shakespeare as a character engaged in colonial endeavours. Kirsten Sandrock explores
generic features and traditional narratives in The Tempest arguing that travel narratives
and reports of sea voyages had a decisive influence on the structure and theme of that
play. Referring to these structural and thematic elements, she explores the boundary
drawn between medieval and early modern culture. Thomas Kullmann scrutinizes
humility as a human response to storms in the literal and metaphorical sense. He
argues that humility brought about by a reflection of the sea is an integral part of
2
Introduction
Renaissance culture at large and Shakespeare’s plays in particular. Simonetta de
Filippis traces the ideological as much as theatrical function of ships and shipwrecks
on the Shakespearean stage. Looking in closer detail at Pericles, she examines the
protagonist’s quest as a search for his lost identity and as the result to come to terms
with his ‘secret wound’ in the sense elaborated by Julia Kristeva. Ursula Kluwick
looks at how early modern conceptions of the ocean are realigned in Iris Murdoch’s
prose adaption of The Tempest, The Sea, The Sea, and Derek Jarman’s film The
Tempest. Personal and social issues introduced by Murdoch and Jarman highlight that
our fascination with the ocean is rooted in early modern conceptions of the sea as a
remnant of pre-Creation chaos, as a zone with limited human control.
Shakespeare Seminar 9 (2011)