engleski

Female Literary Body as a Storyteller: On Two Stories Told by Tamora’s Body in William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus

The article begins with three questions: a) is it possible to read a story simply through body expressions ; b) did William Shakespeare communicate his ideas just through words, or through the body, as well ; and if so, does this type of reading reveal the possibility of (re)reading a canonical text in a different, new, contemporary way? In trying to answer these questions, the author focuses on William Shakespeare's female character, Tamora, and her body as a storyteller. Tamora's body tells two stories: a) story of captured, helpless female body, i.e., a story of an object of domination and control ; b) story in which she, by adopting a man-like-behaviour, wicked and cruel manners, uses her body as a medium of self- expression, a voice in re-righting her own (hi)story. In attempting to analyse the body motif in William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, the article ends by underlining the following: stories can be corporeal, they can be told through the body, in this case through female body, that becomes not only readable but understandable, too ; through this type of (re)reading canonical texts, the reader creates new reading patterns in which literary texts and socio-cultural context negotiate, to use Stephen Greenblatt's words, with each other thus mirroring 'old' canonical texts in a contemporary, more up- to-date fashion.

Identity; interpretation; female body; literary text; story; William Shakespeare

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