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Tragedy as a Medieval Inheritance Tragedy as a Medieval Inheritance
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Early English Drama and Tragedy Early English Drama and Tragedy
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Shakespeare the Medievalist Shakespeare the Medievalist
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‘… would I were a devil’ ‘… would I were a devil’
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‘A flourish of trumpets …’ ‘A flourish of trumpets …’
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Select Bibliography Select Bibliography
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3 The Medieval Inheritance
Get accessRory Loughnane, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
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Published:02 November 2016
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Abstract
This chapter discusses the medieval inheritance in Shakespearean tragedy in two ways. First it describes how the literary genre of tragedy in late medieval England was distinct from classical definitions of tragedy as outlined in Aristotle’s Poetics. Rather the early English conception of the genre as found in Chaucer, Lydgate, and others, was informed by the exempla of the De Casibus tradition, with sudden reversals of fortune understood as part of a grand plan of the execution of God’s divine will. Late medieval religious drama (hagiographical plays, mysteries, moralities) also greatly influenced the secular form of tragedy that emerged. The second part of the chapter describes how Shakespeare uses and adapts recognizably ‘medieval’ details in his tragedies. Eschewing a critical path that emphasizes Shakespeare’s early modernity, the chapter concludes with close readings from Hamlet and Titus Andronicus to consider what is inherited and retained rather than discarded.
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