Abstract
T
 
 
 
 
 his article proposes a methodology to study Shakespearean intertexts in contemporary complex TV series. While the presence of Shakespeare’s inter-texts in contemporary complex TV seems ubiquitous, a sustained and theoretically focused academic study of the impact of Shakespeare in these works has not been produced. Reviewers and social media users’ comments have proposed readings of the series pointing at the importance of the series’ redemptive qualities. Taking Hannah Wolfe Eisner’s “Into the Middle of Things: Traumatic Redemption and the Politics of Form” as basis, I am presenting a theoretical model to study serial Shakespeares, with which I am referring to a limited corpus of American complex TV series appropriating Shakespeare’s texts, as narratives embedded in a cultural politics of trauma and redemption. Additionally, it shows that such series potentially work as guidelines to study the overall impact of traumatic redemption in other contemporary adaptations of Shakespearean plays.
 
 
 
Highlights
This article proposes a methodology to study Shakespearean intertexts in contemporary complex TV series
This article reviews criticism situating the Shakespearean intertexts in complex series in a light that makes them analyzable from the lens of traumatic redemption
A comparative approach to read a corpus of Shakespearean adaptations from the lens of traumatic redemption – and, interestingly, following Douglas Lanier’s rhizomatic model, using Rome as vantage point – permits examining a selection of adaptations of Julius Caesar as trauma-redemption dialectics
Summary
In her analysis of Deadwood made through the lens of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Susan C. As Noel Ceballos affirms, Abernathy, in his remembering of his acting days, fathoms an emancipatory force which comes associated with his memories of Shakespeare in the theatre.As Janey Tracey says,in Shakespeare’s King Lear, Lear earns an ‘enlightened soul’ through suffering In this way, “the androids may achieve enlightenme The Wire nt through their traumatic reveries – and through their exposure to literature” as Matt Patches suggests,, the series’ delving in trauma is not a cynical study but a recognition that “Grief, and the little voice in [the human] head who wrestles with those though situation, is what makes us human” If there is anything that Pullo and Vorenus’ friendship symbolizes is the emancipatory possibility of union of peoples belonging to different social ranks in order to oppose or, at least, contend against the ideological, coercive and military forces that the state displays over the population Such redemptive story is filled with dark stretches. We are deprived of definitive conclusions regarding Vorena and Vorenus’ reconciliation
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