Cardenio between Cervantes and Shakespeare: The Story of a Lost Play - Couverture souple

Chartier, Roger

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0745661858 ISBN 13 : 9780745661858

Editeur : Polity Press, 2012

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

How should we read a text that does not exist, or present a playthe manuscript of which is lost and the identity of whose authorcannot be established for certain?

Such is the enigma posed by Cardenio a playperformed in England for the first time in 1612 or 1613 andattributed forty years later to Shakespeare (and Fletcher). Itsplot is that of a novella inserted into Don Quixote,a work that circulated throughout the major countries of Europe,where it was translated and adapted for the theatre. In England,Cervantes novel was known and cited even before it wastranslated in 1612 and had inspired Cardenio.

But there is more at stake in this enigma. This was a time when,thanks mainly to the invention of the printing press, there was aproliferation of discourses. There was often a reaction when it wasfeared that this proliferation would become excessive, and manywritings were weeded out. Not all were destined to survive, inparticular plays for the theatre, which, in many cases, were neverpublished. This genre, situated at the bottom of the literaryhierarchy, was well suited to the existence of ephemeral works.However, if an author became famous, the desire for an archive ofhis works prompted the invention of textual relics, the restorationof remainders ruined by the passing of time or, in order to fill inthe gaps, in some cases, even the fabrication of forgeries. Suchwas the fate of Cardenio in the eighteenth century.

Retracing the history of this play therefore leads one to wonderabout the status, in the past, of works today judged to becanonical. In this book the reader will rediscover the malleabilityof texts, transformed as they were by translations and adaptations,their migrations from one genre to another, and their changingmeanings constructed by their various publics. Thanks to RogerChartier s forensic skills, fresh light is cast upon themystery of a play lacking a text but not an author.

Revue de presse :

"Intriguing Chartier′s elegant analysis of ′the story ofa lost play′ is predicated upon the disjunction between Renaissanceliterary production and post–Romantic ideas of authorship thatobsess about the creative genius of the single author who breathesoriginality into a work that remains recognisably and forever, hisown."
Times Higher Education

"Roger Chartier is one of our most enthralling historians of thebook. Cardenio between Cervantes and Shakespeare is abrilliant investigation of elusive textual traces across borders,languages, and centuries. Chartier has written an essential casestudy of the pleasures and perils of cultural mobility."
Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard University

"In this magnificent new book, Roger Chartier extends culturalhistory into unexplored territory, a pre–modern world where textsproliferated promiscuously, crossing genres, languages, and publicsin ways undreamt of today, except by writers like Borges. Chartier challenges the notions of fixed authorship andauthoritative texts in a tour of literature between Cervantes andShakespeare that will surprise and delight readers inside andoutside the Academy."
Robert Darnton, Harvard University

"The great contribution of Chartier s book is to treatthe Shakespearean and Theobaldean Cardenios as two among manyversions of this story, for it seems that Cervantes sconvoluted novella caught the imaginations of readers andspectators across Europe and even in the New World."
Adrian Johns, University of Chicago

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Polity Press
• Date d'édition: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0745661858
• ISBN 13: 9780745661858
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 256