William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1603) Revisited through John Updike’s Gertrude and Claudius (2000) and Ian McEwen’s Nutshell (2016): An Intertextual Dialogic and Cultural Materialist Study

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Date

2022

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Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou

Abstract

This research, studies John Updike’s Gertrude and Claudius (2000) and Ian McEwen’s Nutshell (2016) in relation to William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1603) from in intertextual dialogic and cultural materialist approach. This study, as a matter of fact, aims to discuss and investigate the two works of John Updike and Ian McEwen, and their connection to William Shakespeare’s Hamlet relying on different theories which might help us in our quest to identify the nature of this link and conceptualise the scope of our study, Among them figures Intertextual dialogism of Mikhail Bakhtin, more precisely overt polemic and stylization. Other theoretical concepts include Cultural Materialist developed by Raymond Williams which is organised as such: residual, dominant, and emergent. After analysing the two novels in the light of William Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet Prince of Denmark, and by using the above mentioned theories, we came to the conclusion that both works are intertexts of William Shakespeare’s source text. Both writers reflect the issues of their societies in the different eras using texts that are rich in meaning made possible by the use of plot, themes, characters and Shakespearian language.

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62p. ; 30cm.(+CD-Rom)

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Citation

Littérature et civilisation