New directions: The Names of the Rose: Romeo and Juliet in Italy

The Names of the Rose: Romeo and Juliet in Italy Bringing Romeo and Juliet back to their native Italy provokes a set of questions that illuminate the larger issue of how Shakespeare moves in space and time, across languages, cultures, and different media. By focusing on key episodes and individuals in the afterlife of the best known 'Italian' play by Shakespeare, the essay will explore different aspects of Romeo and Juliet. I will look at how the story travelled from Italy to Shakespeare and back to Italy, being translated, circulated, adapted, rewritten, commodified, reconfigured through local cultural, religious and aesthetic codes. What did the Italian setting and plot mean for Shakespeare? How does a different cultural, linguistic, religious episteme affect the reception and reconfiguration of a play? How does Shakespeare influence his sources? How does a Shakespearean myth become commodified, fetishized, trivialized? What is the function of Medieval Italy in the early modern vs. postmodern imaginary? To what extent is an actor a critic of Shakespeare (with her body, gender, age, speech, gestural vocabulary, etc.)? How does the city of Verona deal with its world famous myth? The essay will also discuss how a literary myth can overflow the boundaries of the aesthetic and spill into other domains such as onomastics, tourism, industry, advertising, etc. Specific texts considered will include Eleonora Duse's interpretation of Juliet, Francesco Hayez's Romantic painting, and the famous banner unrolled by Neapolitan soccer fans at Verona stadium, as a retort to the local hooligans racist slogans inciting Mount Vesuvius to turn Naples into a new Pompei: "Juliet is a whore". (Shaul Bassi, Università Ca'Foscari Venezia)