Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Homoerotic Medievalism: Looking At Queer Desire In The Homosocial Relationships Of Chaucer’S “The Knight’S Tale” And Fletcher And Shakespeare’S The Two Noble Kinsmen, Juan P. Espinosa

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to explore queer interiority within the heteronormative social constructions of late medieval England. Queer interiority is not an occurrence of modernity, but rather a response to social constructions that date back to the Middle Ages. It is essential to account for queerness in the Middle Ages because authors like Chaucer promote the successive resurfacing of queer characters within heteronormative social constructions. Writing during the queer reign of Richard II, Chaucer constructs the interior identities of Palamon and Arcite as a reflection of the king and the political norms of England. Inspired by Chaucer, authors …

Much Ado About Contemporary Women: Gender Adapted In Contemporary Settings, Jessica C. Valdes

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing has been reproduced multiple times in a contemporary context. This thesis focuses on two key productions, BBC’s ShakespeaRe-Told televised adaptation and Joss Whedon’s 2013 film and examines how these productions translate the gender themes in the play to a contemporary setting. To study translations of gender, this thesis is focused on the adaptations of Beatrice and Hero, two major female characters of the play. The comparison of these adaptations is accomplished through analyzing the pieces and reviewing existing work. While there are some important differences between the adaptations, the major problems Beatrice and Hero are …

Identity Formation And The Stranger In William Shakespeare's Othello And The Merchant Of Venice, Rodney Castillo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to probe the question of the stranger as engaged by William Shakespeare in the plays Othello and The Merchant of Venice. It will introduce predominant views held during Tudor England towards foreigners and other marginalized groups, to ascertain the forces that influenced Shakespeare’s works, and to provide a historical frame of reference. Further, the thesis will engage with issues of identity formation through postcolonial theories of cultural hybridity and hospitality as expressed by critical theorists Stuart Hall, Homi K. Bhabha, and Jacques Derrida. While racism and anti-Semitism are the most common readings of these …

Proceduralizing Privilege: Designing Shakespeare In Virtual Reality And The Problem With The Canon, David M. Frisch

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on the development of the first project for FIU’s ICAVE, The Globe Experience, presented as part of the “First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare” exhibit during February, 2016. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part is the project itself: a virtual reality recreation of going to The Globe Theater to see a play by William Shakespeare. The second part examines the digital project and outlines how Walter Benjamin and postcolonial theorists influenced the design of The Globe Experience, resulting in, what I call, a “temporally and spatially disjointed London.” From this examination, …

"Hamlet" And Marginality, Eduardo Barreto

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research aims to explore the place of marginality (or that which is not the immediate focus of narrative) in the context of the play and through the examination of the characters of Fortinbras and Horatio, in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The intended outcome is to encourage diversified perspectives and approaches to the play by focusing on the marginal themes and/or characters.

The chapters address the characters of Fortinbras and Horatio; the first inverts the protagonist/foil relationship by reading Hamlet as a foil to Fortinbras, while the second uses Freud’s “The Uncanny” as a way to understand Horatio’s role in …

The Commodification Of Queer Virgins In Shakespeare, Spenser, And Keats, Laura M. Ortega

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to explore selected works from William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, and John Keats, in order to expose textual instances of feminist thought. This analysis was aided with feminist theorists falling under the main strains of queer theory, materialism, and gender performance. Specifically, this thesis focused on the ways in which women, particularly virgin daughters, were viewed as property by their male kin. It also looked at how these women engaged in various symbolic masquerades and/or actual cross-dressing as a response to the aforementioned phenomenon. Finally, the thesis exposed how these masquerades can be construed as …

Gender Benders: Shakespeare's Rosalind And Woolf's Orlando, Katrina Armenteros

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

English Renaissance playwright, William Shakespeare and twentieth century modernist author, Virginia Woolf’s works, “As You Like It” (1599) and “Orlando” (1928), respectively posit a vision of gender that transcends the physical sex of the body. The play’s heroine, Rosalind, and the novel’s protagonist, Orlando, each challenge the stability of the binary categories of male and female, demonstrating how gender is not absolute but rather a constantly adapting and evolving construct. This thesis traces the development of Rosalind and Orlando by analyzing and comparing both protagonists’ journeys towards concordia discors, considering how gender transformation plays a pivotal role in helping …

Simply Genre Films: Extracting “King Lear” From “House Of Strangers” And “Broken Lance", Sophia G. I. Funk

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate and refute Yvonne Griggs’ claims that the films “House of Strangers” (1949) and “Broken Lance” (1954) are as Griggs deems “genre-based adaptations” of William Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” I argue that the films, although they have some essential elements of “King Lear,” lack intentionality and reception, pivotal components in determining viability as a Shakespearean film adaptation. Using Griggs’ book as my critical background, I will show that these films are better classified under their respective genre categories, Western and film noir, not as “King Lear” genre adaptations. I will …

Anti-Romance: How William Shakespeare’S “King Lear” Informed John Keats’S “Lamia”, Shelly S. Gonzalez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze John Keats’s “Lamia” and his style of Anti-Romance as informed by William Shakespeare’s own experimentation with Romance and Anti-Romance in “King Lear.”

In order to fulfill the purpose of my thesis, I explore both the Romance and the Anti-Romance genres and develop a definition of the latter that is more particular to “King Lear” and “Lamia.” I also look at the source material for both “King Lear” and “Lamia” to see how Shakespeare and Keats were handling the originally Romantic material. Both Shakespeare and Keats altered the original material by subverting the …

Accepting The Failure Of Human And State Bodies: Interactions Of Syphilis And Space In "Hamlet" And "The Knight Of The Burning Pestle", Laura E. Radford

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is, first, to explore the presence and meaning of Foucault’s heterotopia within William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”and Beaumont and Fletcher’s “The Knight of the Burning Pestle.” The heterotopia is a privileged space of self-reflection created by individuals or societies in crisis. In each play, the presence of crisis is explained though the metaphor of syphilis; to which individual characters respond by entering the reflective space of the heterotopia in order to countenance and “cure” their afflictions. The second purpose of this thesis is to examine the ways in which the crises acted upon the stage reflect …