“...a great crisis of identification and understanding of reality” : Strehler’s journey through Shakespeare

Nigri, L

Abstract

Shakespeare’s plays proved crucial in Strehler’s career in many respects as they provided ‘narratives’ through which he could interpret the sequence of cultural, political, and social crises that he acknowledged, experienced personally, and more or less directly addressed in his own theatre. This chapter explores how, through specific Shakespearean plays, these crises – which were both individual and collective – raised in Strehler questions on the nature of history. It also explores Strehler’s interrogation of the meaning of man in a world dominated by monotonous and nonsensical power games from the perspective of a cyclic view of history. Strehler’s encounter with Shakespeare is examined through his own writings as well as reviews and other related material. This constitutes a second-level focus mapping onto the role of different types of narratives in our reconstruction of Strehler’s own dynamic understanding of Italy within the international context over a time-span of thirty years.

• Publication Date: Jun 15, 2020
• Deposit Date: Oct 15, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 15, 2021
• Pages: 149-174
• Series Title: Shakespeare in European Culture
• Series Number: 2
• Book Title: Shakespeare and Crisis: An Italian Narrative
• ISBN: 9789027205612-(hbk.);-9789027261113-(eBook)
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1075/sec.2.04nig
• Related Public URLs: https://benjamins.com/content/home
• Additional Information: Access Information : This material is under copyright and that the publisher should be contacted for permission to re-use or reprint the material in any form.