Saturday, January 19, 2008

Brian Yost: "Visual and Ideological Revolt"

Brian Yost
Texas Tech University

Visual and Ideological Revolt: The Divided Carnivalesque in The Revenger’s Tragedy

1 comment:

mary lindroth said...

Your paper entitled “Visual and Ideological Revolt: The Divided Carnivalesque in The Revenger’s Tragedy” was of interest to me because of my own work in the area of Jacobean (and Elizabethan drama). Your argument that the play provides simultaneous and alternative responses to an unjust world – the revenge provided by Vindice and Spurio and the mercy and grace provided by Castiza and Gratiana – is thought-provoking. In particular, your point that the playwright’s “use of grotesque bodily imagery” communicates more than a moralistic message that revenge is bad made me think of a recent 2005-06 New York City production of The Revenger’s Tragedy. The production by The Red Bull Theater (which is committed to performing Elizabethan and Jacobean plays) insisted upon showing the audience the actors’ bodies, in all their guises – naked, clothed, sensual, corporal and grotesque. Clearly the performers’ bodies were being used to anchor the text to the physical.