2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
A Study of Visual Effects in the Early Modern English Theatrical Space
| Project/Area Number |
24520265
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Literature in English
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| Research Institution | Tohoku University |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Project Period (FY) |
2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
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| Keywords | theatre / stage / staging / play-text / stage-direction |
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| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
The London commercial theatres of the early modern period employed little scenery or set. However, this does not mean that the Shakespearean theatre was a place of primitive techniques, capable only of crude and unsophisticated theatrical effects. A close analysis of play texts shows that the structure of the theatrical space in which the plays were first performed made possible various kinds of visual effects. The Merchant of Venice, for example, offers a scene where Shylock's status as villain is reinforced not just by the play's imagery but by the way that the actual structure of the Elizabethan stage made visible some of that imagery, giving it greater intensity. In Act 2, scene 5, his locking up inside his house all his possessions, including his own daughter, symbolizes his mean, suspicious, and narrow-minded nature. This study deals with such visual "metaphors" presented in the stage space of the early modern English theatres.
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| Free Research Field |
イギリス演劇
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