TY - JOUR
T1 - A “NOTABLE FOUNDATION OF HEARSAY”
T2 - CREATIVE APPROPRIATIONS OF TROY IN CHAUCER, CHAPMAN, AND SHAKESPEARE
AU - Hall, Sam Gilchrist
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, Charles University, Faculty of Arts. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - An extended and precociously brilliant exercise in “parodic intertextuality,” Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (1602) mangles its two main sources, George Chapman’s translation of the Iliad and Chaucer’s courtly romance, Troilus and Criseyde (ca. 1385). The play ruthlessly debunks rose-tinted representations of the Trojan war by dramatizing it as beset by gossip, venality and hypocrisy. It not only suggests that the fall of Troy was just the first awful misfortune in the endless series of atrocities that constitute history, but it also undermines the authority of Tudor histories that commonly held Britain was founded by a Trojan, Brut. Shakespeare thereby implies that the idea of a unitary British identity stretching back to the noble days of yore – a form of primordialism that has resurfaced in recent years – is built on nothing other than a “notable foundation of hearsay.”.
AB - An extended and precociously brilliant exercise in “parodic intertextuality,” Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (1602) mangles its two main sources, George Chapman’s translation of the Iliad and Chaucer’s courtly romance, Troilus and Criseyde (ca. 1385). The play ruthlessly debunks rose-tinted representations of the Trojan war by dramatizing it as beset by gossip, venality and hypocrisy. It not only suggests that the fall of Troy was just the first awful misfortune in the endless series of atrocities that constitute history, but it also undermines the authority of Tudor histories that commonly held Britain was founded by a Trojan, Brut. Shakespeare thereby implies that the idea of a unitary British identity stretching back to the noble days of yore – a form of primordialism that has resurfaced in recent years – is built on nothing other than a “notable foundation of hearsay.”.
KW - Chaucer
KW - History
KW - Iliad
KW - Rumour
KW - Shakespeare
KW - Troilus and Cressida
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85126679018&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.14712/2571452X.2021.62.3
DO - 10.14712/2571452X.2021.62.3
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85126679018
SN - 0862-8424
VL - 31
SP - 36
EP - 53
JO - Litteraria Pragensia
JF - Litteraria Pragensia
IS - 62
ER -