Pre-Raphaelite Artists Transposing Shakespeare's
Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2017. eISBN: 978-606-8624-12-9 PRE-RAPHAELITE ARTISTS TRANSPOSING SHAKESPEARE’S OPHELIA Lavinia Hulea Lecturer, PhD, University of Petroșani Abstract: In the context of the preference manifested by the Victorian painters for Shakespeareřs work, the character of Ophelia gradually became a highly exploited subject, which resulted in a series of paintings that were hosted by the exhibitions of the Royal Academy, almost on a regular basis. Despite concomitant or subsequent paintings that treated the tragic figure of Ophelia, Millaisřs version, which has been accredited to represent the scene where the young woman, maddened by the death of her father, Polonius, murdered by Hamlet, her lover, drowned herself in a stream, was quite unusual, at the time, and is considered to have singularly expressed the themes of love, death, youth and beauty as pervasive of both the art and life.The literary source text that Hughes had in mind when he embarked on painting his Ophelia is the same as the one referred to by Millais (act IV, scene 7). Yet, the conversion of the source text engages changes that substantiate an artistic product which hardly asserts an identity resemblance to Millaisřs painting. Text and image are mixed by Hughes in a manner that expresses a conversion of the character that is obviously different from the work of the Pre-Raphaelite founder. Keywords: Pre-Raphaelites, transposition, reversed-ekphrasis, source text, target text Ophelia (1851-2) by John Everett Millais Millaisřs version of Ophelia, which has been accredited to represent the scene where the young woman, maddened by the death of her father, Polonius, murdered by Hamlet, her lover, drowned herself in a stream, was quite unusual, at the time, and is considered to have singularly expressed the themes of love, death, youth and beauty as pervasive of both the art and life.
[Show full text]