"Their hour will be his hour" : Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed and the Conventions of Renaissance Revenge Plays

KRAJNÍK, Filip and Michaela WEISS. "Their hour will be his hour" : Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed and the Conventions of Renaissance Revenge Plays. Hradec Králové Journal of Anglophone Studies. Hradec Králové: Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Education, University of Hradec Králové, 2021, vol. 8, 1-2, p. 80-86. ISSN 2336-3347.

Basic information

• Original name: "Their hour will be his hour" : Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed and the Conventions of Renaissance Revenge Plays
• Authors: KRAJNÍK, Filip (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution) and Michaela WEISS (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: Hradec Králové Journal of Anglophone Studies, Hradec Králové, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Education, University of Hradec Králové, 2021, 2336-3347.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Article in a journal
• Field of Study: 60206 Specific literatures
• Country of publisher: Czech Republic
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: Domovská stránka periodika.
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14210/21:00123760
• Organization unit: Faculty of Arts
• Keywords in English: Margaret Atwood; Hag-Seed; William Shakespeare; The Tempest; revenge tragedy; early-modern English theatre
• Tags: rivok
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

Although an openly radical re-imagination of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed (2016) is in many ways faithful to the Renaissance roots of its model. Streamlining the convoluted plot of the original and narrating it chiefly from the perspective of the story’s protagonist, Felix Phillips (the “Prospero” of the novel), Atwood’s text is centred on the motifs of (in)justice and personal revenge. This article argues that to emphasise her interpretation of the Shakespeare play, Atwood employs a number of conventional elements of Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge plays – such as the metatheatrical techniques, the strong character of the avenger, the presence of the ghost and the avenger’s death – making her novel not only a modernised version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but also a revival, of a kind, of a whole dramatic genre, whose popularity peaked in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and whose conventions permeate the structure of Hag-Seed’s narrative.

Links

• MUNI/A/1446/2020, interní kód MU: Name: Paradigms, strategies and developments - Anglophone literary and cultural studies

Investor: Masaryk University