The Renaissance Colloquium is delighted to present Tanya Pollard (Brooklyn College, CUNY).
“Shakespeare’s Trojan Queens and Tragic Sympathies”
Friday, October 6 at 10:30 AM
LC 219
Titus Andronicus begins with a son’s sacrifice and a mother’s vow of vengeance. In the wake of Tamora’s grief and fury, her son calls for help from “The self-same gods that armed the Queen of Troy/ With opportunity of sharp revenge/ Upon the Thracian tyrant in his tent.” This talk takes Demetrius’s curiously specific allusion as a starting point for reflecting on the complex sympathies unleashed by Hecuba in Shakespeare’s first tragedy and beyond. Drawing on my research into the circulation of Greek texts in sixteenth-century England and Europe, I argue that tracing responses to Hecuba and other iconic female figures suggests a new understanding of how early moderns imagined the work of the tragic theater.
If you are interested in joining us for lunch and coffee after the event, please e-mail emily.glider@yale.edu or sophia.richardson@yale.edu.