| In this study I focus on the male protagonist in three Early Modern plays and in three Late Modern film adaptations of these plays: Christopher Marlowe's Edward II (1595) rewritten in Derek Jarman's 1991 film, Edward II, William Shakespeare's King Lear (1609) rewritten in Jean-Luc Godard's 1987 film, King Lear, and William Shakespeare's The Tempest (1611) rewritten in Peter Greenaway's 1991 film, Prospero's Books. Each male protagonist is a body of cultural evidence. How each body is depicted---how humanity is embodied---in different genres by different artists is testament to the differences in these genres and in these times.;How each body of evidence is eroticized and then de-eroticized, how each is scripted in Renaissance drama and then rescripted in avant-garde cinematic adaptations, and what these inscriptions reveal about Early Modern and Late Modern cultures, in particular, their erotic concepts and gendered sexual perceptions, is the subject of this work. |
