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http://hdl.handle.net/11375/11209
Title: | Collective Memory and Performance: An Analysis of Two Adaptations of the Legend of Beatrice Cenci |
Authors: | Montague, Amanda |
Advisor: | Kehler, Grace York, Lorraine Fast, Susan |
Department: | English and Cultural Studies |
Keywords: | Canadian Opera;Beatrice Chancy;Beatrice Cenci;George Elliott Clarke;Percy Bysshe Shelley;Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory;Literature in English, British Isles;Literature in English, North America;Musicology;Other Race, Ethnicity and post-Colonial Studies;Performance Studies;Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory |
Publication Date: | Oct-2011 |
Abstract: | <p>This study focuses on two incarnations of the Cenci legend: Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1819 verse drama <em>The Cenci</em> and George Elliott Clarke and James Rolfe’s 1998 chamber opera <em>Beatrice Chancy</em>. Shelley composed <em>The Cenci</em> after he discovered an Italian manuscript recounting the life of Beatrice Cenci who, after being raped by her father, plotted the murder of the debauched patriarch and was subsequently executed for parricide. Nearly two centuries later, Clarke and Rolfe created <em>Beatrice Chancy</em>, an Africadianized adaptation of the Cenci legend inspired by Shelley’s play. This study investigates they way in which multiple performance genres re-embody history in order to contest collective memory and reconfigure concepts of nationhood and citizenship. It examines the principles of nineteenth-century closet drama and the way in which Shelley's play questions systems of despotic, patriarchal power by raising issues of speech and silence, public and private. This is followed by a consideration of how Clarke and Rolfe's transcultural adaptation uncovers similar issues in Canadian history, where discourses of domestic abuse come to reflect public constructs of citizenship. Particularly this study examines how, through the immediacy of operatic performance and the powerful voice of the diva, <em>Beatrice Chancy</em> contests Canada’s systematic silencing of a violent history of slavery and oppression.</p> |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/11375/11209 |
Identifier: | opendissertations/6195 7141 2221817 |
Appears in Collections: | Open Access Dissertations and Theses |
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