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The Hamlet Zone: Reworking Hamlet for European Cultures
Author(s): Ruth J. Owen (Author, Editor)
- Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
- Publication Date: 13 July 2012
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 240 pages
- ISBN-10: 1443839744
- ISBN-13: 9781443839747
Book Description
Detached from Shakespeare’s English, Hamlet has been rewritten numerous times in European languages, the various translations into any one language jostling with each other for dominance and spawning new Hamlets that depart decisively from Shakespeare as a source. This book focuses on the rich tradition of drawing from Hamlet in European cultures to produce new, independent works, which include Hamlet theatre, Hamlet ballet, Hamlet poetry, Hamlet fiction, Hamlet essays and Hamlet films. It examines how the myth of Hamlet has crossed back and forth over Europe’s linguistic borders for four hundred years, repeatedly reinvigorated by being bent to specific geo-political and cultural locations. The enquiries in this book show how, in the process of translation, adaptation and reinventing, Hamlet has become the common cultural currency of Europe.
Editorial Reviews
Review
A brilliantly lively volume which recontextualizes Hamlet from Portuguese theatre, to Russian ballet, Hungarian poetry, Spanish exile writing, German philosophical criticism, Swedish political drama and radical multimedia experiment. This constantly surprising and inspiring volume demonstrates, if there were any doubt, that Shakespeare is still a vital part of our global intellectual currency and Hamlet is at the very centre of the modern European imagination. –Prof. Karen Leeder, New College, University of Oxford
About the Author
Ruth J. Owen is Senior Lecturer in German at Cardiff University in the UK. Her research interests focus on German-language poetry. She has published widely on the poetry of the German Democratic Republic, the German city in postwar poetry, poetry of the body, and the figure of Ophelia in German literature. She is the author of The Poet’s Role: Lyric Responses to German Unification and co-ordinator of the Poetry Research Network.
