Re-Working Shakespeare: Heiner Müller’s Macbeth

• Authors: Mădălina Nicolaescu
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article focuses on particular meanings of the term “work,” as related first to the process of adapting Shakespeare and secondly to the ideological and philosophical resonances of this term as employed in the socialist propaganda in East Germany and which Heiner Müller introduces into Shakespeare’s text and gives an ironical twist to. In the first part it points to a few aspects of East German doctrinaire readings of Shakespeare, which were further contested and deconstructed in Müller’s translation cum adaptation. The final part zooms in on the reconfiguring of the established meanings attached to the concept of work in Müller’s rewriting of Macbeth and on the relation between these meanings and the philosophy of history he proposes in his adaptation.

Keywords

EN

Shakespeare; Heiner Müller; Macbeth; rewriting; Jan Kott; violence; socialist realism; GDR

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: American, British and Canadian Studies Journal
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 25
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 119-131

Dates

published

2015-12-01

online

2016-02-12

Contributors

author

Mădălina Nicolaescu

• University of Bucharest

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/abcsj-2015-0010