Shakespeare at Home: Decoding Home as a ‘Phenomenon of Perception’ in Shakespeare’s Major Tragedies
Keywords:
Home, Perception, Shakespeare, Imagined Place, PhenomenonAbstract
For Shakespeare, home is always virtual, imagined, not based on exact observation and not represented realistically. Shakespeare invites his readers to form images and notions with regard to something not known with certainty. Home as an imagined place suggests mediation through perception. Places come into focus, but then seem to fade from the characters’ consciousness. Shakespeare treats such imagined places as phenomena of perception, partially conceived and partially revealed.
This paper intends to explore the cultural connections pertaining to domestic life and tragedy in Shakespeare’s major tragedies – King Lear, Othello, Hamlet and Macbeth. In particular, the dramatic function of the dwelling places in the tragedies, and the extent to which Shakespeare intertwines home and perception are deciphered. In a broad sense, the paper concerns with the materiality of the house, the staging of place, and theatrical issues such as setting, scenery and spectacle, and how Shakespeare “imagines” home life, and explores mediated, inhabited space in the major tragedies.
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