Working title: "Do Photographic Representations Cheapen Shakespeare's Classic Characters?"
Working thesis statement: While it is normal to want to interpret Shakespeare's characters through photographs, confining a well-rounded character to a one dimensional photograph can harm the portrayal of Shakespeare's work, causing more damage than intended.
My original idea was to look at several different Shakespeare plays, but I keep drifting towards Ophelia in Hamlet... should I narrow it down just to Hamlet, or should I branch out and find some other examples?
Scholarly Sources
Belsey, Catherine. "Shakespeare and Film: A Question of Perspective." Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 11, no. 3, 1983, p. 152-158.
Belsey starts her article talking about ambiguity and art, and how it is important to look at Shakespeare in multiple forms, rather than assuming that one particular depiction of a play is the only way to analyze it. Her paper aims to argue the same thing that my paper argues, so I believe that I can find points in her paper to back my argument up.
Rothwell, Kenneth S. A History of Shakespeare on Screen, Second Edition. Cambridge University Press, 2004.
This book is about Shakespeare representations on screen. While my paper is focused on photographic representations, this book discusses how long it took to start having Shakespeare adapted to film, and the negative reactions many people had to Shakespeare being so widely available. Many people feared it was degrading to the Bard's great work, which is exactly what my paper is on.
Pettersson, Mikael. “Depictive Traces: On the Phenomenology of Photography.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 69, no. 2, 2011, pp. 185–196. www.jstor.org/stable/42635475.
This paper discusses the use photography has in our society. While it doesn't talk about Shakespeare, it does analyze why we gravitate towards photos so much, and how the exactness present in a photograph changes how close we feel to the subject. Going into the psychological effect of photography could make it easier to understand our interpretation of photographs of Shakespeare's characters.
Pressly, William L. “The Ashbourne Portrait of Shakespeare: Through the Looking Glass.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 1, 1993, pp. 54–72. www.jstor.org/stable/2871172.
While at first glance, this article doesn't seem helpful, it discusses people's reactions to Ashbourne's portrait of Shakespeare. It caused some problems because people wanted to project their own idea of who Shakespeare was on to the portrait, but when something is right there in front of your face, it's hard to read too many different ways in to it. In the same way, it is hard to read too many different ways into a photograph, which causes problems when Shakespeare's characters are so multifaceted.
Media Sources
Kate Winslet as Ophelia in Hamlet. N.d. Women Reading. Web. 18 Nov. 2016.
This image shows Ophelia holding books and seemingly sane. She seems inquisitive and in complete control of her mind, which is how I believe Ophelia should be portrayed.
Waterhouse, John William. Ophelia. Digital image. Wikipedia. N.p., 13 Nov. 2016. Web. 18 Nov. 2016.
This image of Ophelia shows her drowning, which is what most people see.
This is a super interesting idea for a paper! I noticed you have scholarly souces about film - are you going to use these sources to juxtapose with your argument?
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