William Shakespeare had an interest in narrating the visual arts or objects throughout his different genres from narrative poems such as Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, and early plays, The Taming of the Shrew and Timon of Athens to romance plays, Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale. This paper explores the complex relationship between verbal and visual modes of representation in Shakespeare’s ekphrastic descriptions in Hamlet and primarily focuses on the importance of narrating the visual. Significantly, Hamlet presents Shakespeare’s fascination with vivid narration. Shakespeare often describes absent scenes or offstage events through his characters’ recounting, and he also chooses not visual but verbal representation in describing the important events which are worth emphasizing in Hamlet. In other words, many scenes including the murder of Old Hamlet, Hamlet’s enigmatic encounter with Ophelia, and Ophelia’s drowning are narrated rather than staged. The narrated moments highlight Shakespeare’s ekphrasis and create the visuality of language, a speaking picture. Fascinated by the ability of words to create images, Shakespeare makes us(audience and readers) see invisible things and actual events in his vivid descriptions. In Hamlet, especially, the emphasis upon descriptive vividness is found in the Player’s speech and Hamlet’s second soliloquy. Player’s speech raises several complex questions regarding the relationship between narrative and drama. As a literary dramatist, although Shakespeare seems to prioritize dramatic and visual immediacy above verbal narratives, he suggests that we rather count on narrative about what we can’t see, and even what we can see. Eventually, Shakespeare stubbornly shows his interest in the relationship between visual and verbal modes of representation and blurs the distinction between them throughout Hamlet.
한국중앙영어영문학회 [The Jungang English Language And Literature Association Of Korea]
설립연도
1968
분야
인문학>영어와문학
소개
본 학회는 영미어문학의 학술연구와 이에 부합하는 아래의 사업을 기획 수행하며,
또한 회원 상호간의 친목을 도모함을 목적으로 한다.
1. 학회지 발간
2. 연구 발표회, 강연회, 공동연구
3. 영미어문학 관련 도서출판
4. 영미어문학 관계 도서 및 자료의 모집 및 비치
5. 기타 본회의 목적 달성에 필요한 사업
간행물
간행물명
영어영문학연구 [The Jungang Journal of English Language and Literature]