Title Character Research Articles

“My Anna Christie” a Century Later: Speaking Oneself into Existence as Anna and as Actor

ABSTRACT In this article, the author writes from her perspective as an actor, in particular about her performance of the title character in Eugene O’Neill’s “Anna Christie” (1921) with the Eugene O’Neill Foundation in Danville in 2023. She speaks in conversation with Pauline Lord, the first actor to portray Anna Christopherson, and specifically explores the question of what it means to love a character. She argues that to love requires a committment to feeling (living with the character) the struggle (the anger, pain, and shame) of what there could be to hate in the character and therefore ourselves. She argues that such a committment begins necessarily when the character is (when we are) brave enough to declare herself and have her say.

Melmoth and the Irish Gothic Tradition

This article explores the legacies of Melmoth, the title character of Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), in the context of the Irish Gothic tradition. I argue that Melmoth's corporeal monstrosity is symbolically reified in subsequent texts, and that consequently Irish Gothic fiction is both possessing of and possessed by Melmoth. Exploring this in-between space where Melmoth is re-fashioned and re-imagined, I ask what this means for the Irish Gothic tradition and the processes of reflection and self-reflection these texts enact. I therefore trace Melmoth's influence by surveying the works both of Anglo-Irish writers and of Irish Gothic writers outside this particular tradition. In particular, my argument examines tropes of doubling and mirroring in such texts so as to highlight Melmoth's presence as a symbolic and semiotic revenant.

W. SHAKESPEARE’S “HAMLET” IN CONTEXT OF E. LEVINAS’S PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPT OF MAN: DISCOVERING ‘THE OTHER’ AS A MEANINGFUL SUBTEXT OF THE TRAGEDY

The article concentrates on the study of the relationship between literary-artistic and philosophical discourses in the process of verbalizing universal cultural meanings of existence and building a holistic concept of man as an uppermost task of creation and re-creation (interpretation) of a literary work through the example of W. Shakespeare’s tragedy “Hamlet”. The article aims to interpret W. Shakespeare’s tragedy “Hamlet” in the context of ideas of the French thinker E. Levinas, one of the founders of the philosophy of dialogue. The tasks of the study are to characterize the significance of the dialogical vision of personality for the contemporary interpretation of the classics of world literature, to reveal the importance of dialogue between artistic and philosophical discourses while cognizing the human being in his interaction with the world and to consider the system of images in W. Shakespeare’s tragedy “Hamlet” with regard to the philosophy of the Other, developed in E. Levinas’s works “Time and the Other” and “Humanism of the Other”. The main research methods include culture-historical and hermeneutic methods applied in addition to the fundamental ideas of the philosophy of dialogue. The article deals with the tragedy “Hamlet” by W. Shakespeare as a prototext for E. Levinas’s philosophical work “Time and the Other”. Shakespearean reminiscences are characterized as important in terms of the development of the Levinasian concept of man. According to Levinas, the essence of the person is revealed in the dialogical interaction with the Other, which allows one to go beyond the present as captivity, discover the connections with the future in which the subject no longer exists, and achieve the eventful fullness of being, which leads to harmony and opens the way to the transcendental subject and eternity. The system of images in W. Shakespeare’s tragedy “Hamlet” allows one to associate the title character with different variants of the Other, which become significant for him as he fulfils the Ghost’s will. The unfolding of the action can be interpreted as such that it features the establishment of dialogical interaction between the father and the son in its meaningful subtext. At the level of events, the achieved interaction is seen as the fullness of the characters’ personal existence (above all, that of Hamlet and the Ghost), which manifests itself in overcoming the boundary between life and death, restoring the normal course of history and asserting the necessity for the superiority of good over evil. Horatio, the actor (i.e. the First Player), and jester Yorick (an offstage character in the prince’s memories), each of whom represents the conditions necessary for genuine dialogical interaction (belonging to a tradition, empathy, carnival freedom and, therefore, the familiarity of contact with another person), become significant variants of the Other to Hamlet, metonymically equivalent to his father the king.

Interpretive ironies in More’s translations of two Lucianic dialogues

The Lucianic dialogue Cynicus has often been criticized as an unconvincing (and therefore spurious) defense of the philosophy of its title character. I argue that the dialogue deliberately undercuts its characters in humorous ways that guide us to spot their errors, without letting us dismiss anyone's claims entirely. We are meant to learn to separate the good and true from the false and misleading, which is not the same as picking a character to agree with. Thomas More translates Cynicus along with two other Lucianic dialogues, and, in his dedicatory Letter to Thomas Ruthall, describes Cynicus as a straightforward and successful defense of Christian asceticism. More goes so far as to claim that John Chrysostom based a homily on it. More's letter has been criticized as an accidental or deliberate misrepresentation of Cynicus motivated by a desire to make it palatable to censorious readers. I argue that More's treatment of Cynicus, while sincerely appreciative, does not miss its ironies, and even imitates them in its description of the work. More follows Cynicus with his translation of Lucian's Menippus, whose title character's costume recalls the Cynic and whose penchant for telling ironic lies should make us reconsider the Cynic's credibility, if we had trusted him before. More's own translation of Menippus makes subtle changes that invert his dubious claims about Chrysostom and humorously insert Christian advice into the mouth of Lucian's Tiresias in Hades, ironically baptizing the dialogue in a way that is somehow both Christian and Lucianic after all.

Христианская истина и политика в романе Ивлина Во «Елена»

The novel Helena (1950) is analyzed as Evelyn Waugh’s profound statement on his most significant problems: the possibility to resolve the crises of the 20th-century consciousness through Christianity and on the nature of power. Cradle Anglo-Catholics were always suspicious of Waugh, seeing him as an errant Catholic; the paper uses the work of Waugh’s biographers and interpreters to pinpoint his personal reception of Catholicism as the most sophisticated, strictly logical system, firmly grounded in historical fact. Waugh’s story of St. Helena is simultaneously a biography of half-legendary Saint, known for her discovery of the Cross of Golgotha, who thus proved the truthfulness of the founding Christian narrative, and an ironic modern historical novel on the decline of the Roman Empire. Many parallels between the period of Helena’s husband and son (Constantius Chlor and Constantine the Great, respectively) and the catastrophic history of the 20th century are suggested through the devices of anachronism, grotesque, figurative style. The author depicts the persistence of paganism, the use of religious cults as political instrument by cynical persons in their pursuit of individual power. High dose of irony prevents the novel from going in the direction of hagiography; nevertheless the author’s concept of his title character brings to life the most positive and optimistic text in Waugh’s whole oeuvre. By the end of her long life, by converting to Christianity, Helena finds her vocation, her providential mission, completes it, and gains in the fact satisfaction and peace.

Do Shakespeare’s characters mean what they say?

Do Shakespeare’s characters mean what they say?

Rodzina dysfunkcyjna w „Panu Tadeuszu” Adama Mickiewicza

The subject of this article is to present a dysfunctional family on the example of Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz. The title character of the epic grew up in a family with pronounced dysfunction on many levels. As a small boy, he was abandoned by his father, Jacek Soplica, who could not cope with his unrequited love for Ewa Horeszkówna. Due to his alcohol addiction and constant desire for revenge, he neglected both the mother of his son and Tadeusz himself. Later events in the life of the title character show what problems the young man had to struggle with in his adult existence. Visible confusion and a desire to escape responsibility for one's actions illustrate the consequences of even a short-term upbringing in a dysfunctional family.

Film review essay: Inside Llewyn Davis: Faltering steps in the incredible journey from adolescence to adulthood

ABSTRACT The paper discusses the Coen brothers’ film Inside Llewyn Davis as representing in microcosm the developmental trajectory from late adolescence towards adulthood for the title character. This entails negotiating the problems of unconscious guilt, failure to mourn and an awareness of time in order to effect a movement from masochistic melancholy and hidden grandiosity to being able to relinquish omnipotent phantasies, say au revoir to internal persecutors and achieve a degree of self-possession.

“You Know No Rules of Charity”: A Corpus Analysis of ‘Love’ in William Shakespeare’s Richard III Using Voyant Tools

This essay conducts a corpus analysis of ‘love’ in Shakespeare’s Richard III using Voyant Tools, a free web-based application for analyzing digital texts. While Voyant Tools have been used in Shakespeare classes for educational purposes, it is hard to find any books or journal essays that incorporate the online program in Shakespeare drama research. It is hoped that the paper serves as an example that suggests academic potential of using digital tools in drama text analysis. Although Richard III is rarely discussed with reference to ‘love,’ the high frequency of the word in the text confirms its thematic importance in the play. My analysis of the corpus data makes the following discoveries. First, ‘love’ in Richard III has a broad spectrum of meaning ranging from erotic and familial love to loyalty and self-love. Second, the majority of references to ‘love’ come from or concern Richard and his chief assistant Buckingham, both of whom use the word for purposes of deception. Third, the type of love that is absent from all characters, including antagonist Richmond and those who display sincere love for their family or monarch, is ‘charity,’ the highest form of love modeled on God’s unconditional love for humanity. From these observations, it can be concluded that Shakespeare explores the broad spectrum of human love in order to satirize the absence of charity from the powerful figures that inhabit the world of Richard III as well as to expose the limitations and vulnerability of human love. If Richard III is a play of ‘love,’ as the corpus data suggests, it is not a critique of the title character but of the lack of charity in the world he was born into.

ОСОБЕННОСТИ ГОЛОСА СОПРАНО И ЕГО ИНТЕРПРЕТАЦИЯ: ТРАДИЦИЯ ПЕНИЯ И ВОЗМОЖНЫЕ ОБРАЗНЫЕ ВОПЛОЩЕНИЯ

The article is devoted to the description of the timbre of the soprano voice and its artistic semantics. It provides the definition of the term and a brief overview of the use of voice in operas by foreign composers. Technical fluency and mastery of the cantilena are put forward as essential properties of the voice. The article examines the coloristic features of the soprano voice, the repertoire for it, the connection of the voice with possible figurative interpretations and the emotional sphere. It is emphasised that the use of coloratura soprano is typical for European opera, while Russian composers prefer the properties of the lyrical timbre. It is noted that the vocal and aesthetic features of the coloratura soprano are suitable for the embodiment of fabulous images. The soprano is often the title character of the opera, the ideal image of a romantic heroine. The performer has to be fluent in singing technique and at the same time be able to creatively interpret a piece of music according to its style. The verbal text in opera is important, as it affects the formation of the musical fabric and can serve as an additional means of expression. In Russian musical art, soprano characters represent beautiful heroines of historical, epic, lyrical, comic, dramatic, psychological works.

Spiritual Succor or Sacrilege? British Catholic Responses to and Interpretations of Wagner’s Parsifal

Abstract: Scholarly knowledge about the interplay of Wagnerian opera and British church history has advanced on an uneven front and has yet to reach lofty heights. Relatively little has been published about how Parsifal , Richard Wagner’s final and arguably most religious opera, was perceived in the United Kingdom. The present study begins to fill that gap by investigating how a spectrum of British Catholics diversely debated such crucial themes as the extent to which Parsifal was a Christian work, the possible mimesis of the Mass in the Holy Grail scenes, the construction of the title character as a symbolic Christ figure, and whether the staging of this work, whose spiritual content was widely acknowledged, could appropriately be performed in a secular setting like the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden.

Hellhound(s) on My Trail: Reading Cormac McCarthy's Suttree as a Blues

ABSTRACT: This essay rereads Cormac McCarthy's 1979 novel Suttree as a "blues," examining Suttree's deep relationship to the vengeful, hunted black man Ab Jones, whose scarred body and eloquently articulated narrative of persecution leads Suttree to channel his plaintive suffering. Startlingly, the conclusion of the novel, particularly the final image of the huntsman and hounds who the title character fears are chasing him, suggests that McCarthy draws on Delta bluesman Robert Johnson's most famous tune, "Hellhound on My Trail," in his evocation of these hounds and Suttree's fear of them through his channeling the identity of Johnson (behind whom looms Ab Jones). At the same time, the hounds have figuratively embayed a particular Knoxville populace—its black community—with devastating consequences and the hounds' presence through this lyrical intertext at the end of the novel suggest how that community's inhabitants, particularly Ab, continue to be hunted down by the white community's representatives such as the police.

“Who the Hell Are You?”

Tom Stoppard is an outstanding playwright, embellishing his plays with scientific and philosophical approaches and presenting complicated, mysterious plots to the reader. He bases the plot of his postmodern play, Hapgood (1988), on quantum theory and draws an analogy between Werner Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminism, termed “The Uncertainty Principle”, and international espionage. Thus, he constructs the complicated relationship between the particle and the whole throughout the play to depict the relativistic and deceptive relationship between sex and gender. Focusing on the title character of the play, the present study proposes that the play represents the fluid and indeterminate nature of gender and identity within the context of espionage and indeterminism. Hapgood, who is a mother, a lover and a successful master agent in a man-dominated British secret service, navigates between “masculinity” and “femininity” during a day. Moreover, she metamorphoses into her twin, who is entirely different from her, except for their identical faces, to entrap the mole in the office. The study consults Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and fluidity to indicate the unpredictable and uncertain nature of ‘gender identity’, which formulates itself through performances in social relations and trespasses the heterosexual matrix. It juxtaposes the Butlerian approach with the Uncertainty Principle in quantum theory pertaining to the confusing relationship between gender, the body and identity. The Butlerian analysis of the play reveals that particularly the modern way of life makes women transgress the Cartesian dichotomies of sex/gender, masculine/feminine and man/woman through the fluidity of their roles even during a single day and makes it difficult to find out who is really who.

Dostoevsky’s Lost Play “Mary Stuart” (Materials for the Reconstruction of the Idea)

The reconstruction of Dostoevsky’s first literary experience — the lost drama “Mary Stuart” — involves the identification and analysis of the sources of the idea. As a result of the conducted research, a hypothetical chain of events was built. In 1838 (1835, according to other sources), Dostoevsky was impressed by “Mary Stuart” at the Alexandrinsky Theater with A. M. Karatygina in the title role: the image of the suffering queen created by the actress was superimposed on the reading of both Schiller’s tragedy “Mary Stuart” and Walter Scott’s novel “The Abbot.” Russian collection of her biographical documents, published in 1809 and the 1839 French-Russian edition of letters of Mary Stuart, her will and the report on the execution discovered by A. Ya. Lobanov-Rostovsky in the archives, came into the view of the novice writer when he was studying the “historical data” about the “life and execution” of Mary Stuart. In 1839–1840, a fictionalized biography of the “criminal” queen, compiled by Alexandre Dumas, was published. In his version, the image of Mary Stuart is twofold: along with the heroic beginning of the character, the theme of sinful passion emerged. The bifurcation of the image was reinforced in the 1841 essay by Filaret Shal, who also emphasized the religious motives of the unfolding historical drama. Comprehending all these turns of European and Russian historiography in 1839–1842, Dostoevsky could use as the basis of his play the dialogue of the nurse and Mary in the fourth scene of the first act of his tragedy about the correlation between guilt and responsibility, which Schiller did not continue. For Schiller, Mary Stuart is the title character, but not the only main one, moreover, the theme of Elizabeth in many ways attracted dramatic interest. Dostoevsky most likely focused on the internal collisions of the “gigantic character,” whom he placed in a line of Racine’s heroines (first of all, the “Shakespearean essay” by Phaedra): Maria integrated the firmness of spirit in the face of suffering and death itself with the omnipotence of passion, accompanied by torments of conscience. The “historical data” that Riesenkampf hinted at, mastered by the Russian author, allowed to continue Schiller’s creative work. The article identifies and analyzes a range of these data thatrevealed the deep collisions of European history embodied in one of its iconic characters to Dostoevsky.

“Whence, Then, Is This Change of Sentiment?”: Homesteading and Restorative Nostalgia in The Woman of Colour

Following the lead of recent inquiries into The Woman of Colour (1808) as a sensibility narrative that fleshed out the unfinished project of abolitionism at around the time when the slave trade was being outlawed in England (1807), this study explores the intermingling between what Svetlana Boym has identified as two distinctly oriented strands of nostalgia, reflective v. restorative, that innervate the title character’s sensibility of (dis)enchantment with her homesteading voyage, as she is transported from her native island into another – partly ancestral yet also foreign and emetic – insular space, from which she eventually tries to expunge herself into a yet-to-be-undertaken voyage of return.

Hoe de Nederlandse juffers met liefde omgingen

Love played an important role in Wolff and Deken’s 18th-century bestseller, The Historyof Miss Sara Burgerhart. The attitude to the feelings allowed the reader to get to know thenovel’s characters thoroughly. That how they talked about love and made love helped inthe reconstruction of their character drawing. Sara – the title character of the novel – wentthrough a development that also changed her conception of love: from the irresponsibleteenager who enjoyed the company of various, sometimes rowdy boys, she graduallybecame an ideal wife and mother, with whom the sincere love prevailed. In thiscontribution, several models of love in the Sara Burgerhart epistolary novel werecontrasted: the French-tinted, sentimentally colored libertine love game with the calm,reasoned feelings in the Dutch way. The result of such contradiction is easy to guess.

Destiny, Discretion, and the Demonic: On Isak Dinesen's 'Alkmene'

Abstract: What kind of role does fate play in a world that denies its existence? This article explores this question in relation to 'Alkmene', a tale by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), which depicts the relationship between a young nobleman and the title character, an orphan who resists the Christian faith of her adoptive parents. The article examines the mysterious events that conspire to thwart the budding romance between the two. The denial of destiny draws the nobleman into the grip of a demonic silence.

Niewielkie, choć znaczące. Robaki i owady w poezji Kazimierza Brodzińskiego

The subject of the work is the zoomorphic imaginary, specifically the motifs of worms and insects, in the poetry of Kazimierz Brodziński. This review shows that despite sensitivity to suffering and death, Brodziński belonged to the poets of macabre, whilst also balancing between the propensity for playfulness and for melancholy. He sparingly uses the motif of a worm to illustrate images of death, whilst in other situations he uses the diminutive form – “little worm”, thus avoiding the negative implications of the word “worm”, to describe negative phenomena such as loneliness, loss or destruction. Insects are far more numerous. Sometimes they are just background elements but sometimes they become the title characters of poems or even indicate religious faith as the rescue. Butterflies dominate among insects but bees are another sizeable group. Sometimes the author includes such insects as a ladybug, cockchafer, silkworm, mosquito, grasshopper, ant, fly, wasp, firefly or cricket.

Of divas and diaries: Externalizing the internal in Trevor

This article examines the Oscar-winning film Trevor, paying particular attention to how the filmmakers depict the public/external and private/internal aspects of the title character’s identity as he comes to terms with being gay and navigates the coming-out process. The backbone of the film’s narrative is a series of diary entries voiced aloud by Trevor, granting the viewer access to his private thoughts. The film’s soundtrack, consisting mostly of songs by Diana Ross, further externalizes Trevor’s private feelings while linking him to queer culture through his worship of a gay icon. Through a discussion of these elements, this article argues that Trevor uses its narrative structure along with various visual and sonic techniques to illuminate the public and private aspects of coming out in a productive and empowering way.

To Be or Not To Be a Genius: The Argument for Acquired Knowledge and Life Experience

The personal attitudes and experiences of the greatest authors are usually reflected in their works, a phenomenon that gives literary biography its rich potential for new revelations and insights. Within this premise, the Shakespearean poems and plays appear to reflect the viewpoint and education of a high-ranking Elizabethan nobleman of vast experience and deep learning. In fact, many aspects of the life of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, appear to be closely mirrored by the title character of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Both the Earl and the Prince are each on intimate terms with a female monarch; each is involved with the daughter of the Queen’s chief minister; each brings actors to perform at the royal court; and while the author of Hamlet demonstrably referred to classics of the Italian Renaissance-- The Courtier and Cardanus’ Comforte -- Oxford himself sponsored publications of both these works in England. The specific focus of this essay is on aspects of such “special knowledge” within the Shakespearean works, special knowledge that has no specific connection to the life of the man from Stratford but which was deeply imbued in the life of Edward de Vere. Cited here will be details of the author’s connections to France and the French language; to the unique culture and geography of Italy; to the literature and drama of ancient Greece; to legal terminology and intricacies of the law; his proximity to persons and places of state power; to his military expertise; his medical knowledge; his intimacy with the sea and seamanship; to astronomy; to music; horses and horsemanship; heraldry; and to plants gardens and gardening. Such experiences and knowledge was possessed by the Earl of Oxford, and it is contrasted here with the paucity of similar experience and learning in the life of Will Shakspere of Stratford. The evidence clearly suggests that it was Edward de Vere using the pseudonym William Shakespeare rather than Will Shakspere who actually was behind the Bard’s work.