On Wednesday, October 14, Professor Charlotte Artese will present on her new book Shakespeare’s Folktale Sources (University of Delaware Press, 2015). This Writers & Scholars event will take place at 7 pm in the Luchsinger Fireplace Lounge of the Alston Campus Center at Agnes Scott College.
Shakespeare’s Folktale Sources argues that seven plays—The Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Merchant of Venice, All’s Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Cymbeline—derive one or more of their plots directly from folktales. In most cases, scholars have accepted one literary version of the folktale as a source. Recognizing that the same story has circulated orally and occurs in other medieval and early modern written versions allows for new readings of the plays. By acknowledging that a play’s source story circulated in multiple forms, we can see how the playwright was engaging his audience on common ground, retelling a story that may have been familiar to many of them, even the illiterate. We can also view the folktale play as a Shakespearean genre, defined by source as the chronicle histories are, that spans and traces the course of Shakespeare’s career.
Please join us to discuss this groundbreaking work!
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