Monograph
François-Xavier Gleyzon
Rowman & Littlefield, 2010
Rowman & Littlefield, 2010
Semantic Scholar
DOI
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Cite
APA
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Gleyzon, F.-X. (2010). Shakespeare's Spiral.
Chicago/Turabian
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Gleyzon, François-Xavier. “Shakespeare's Spiral” (2010).
MLA
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Gleyzon, François-Xavier. Shakespeare's Spiral. Rowman & Littlefield, 2010.
BibTeX Click to copy
@article{fran2010a,
title = {Shakespeare's Spiral},
year = {2010},
publisher = {Rowman & Littlefield},
author = {Gleyzon, François-Xavier}
}
Abstract
Shakespeare's Spiral aims to explore a figure forgotten in the dramatic texts of Shakespeare and in Renaissance painting: the snail. Taking as its point of departure the emergence of the gastropod object/subject in the text of King Lear as well as its iconic interface in Giovanni Bellini's painting Allegory of Falsehood (circa 1490), this study sets out to follow the particular path traced by the snail throughout the Iuvre. From the central scene in which the metaphor of the snail and of its shell is specifically made manifest when Lear discovers, in a raging storm, the spectacle of Edgar disguised as Poor Tom coming out of his shelter (III.3.6-9) to the monster, this fiend, displaying on the cliffs of Dover, 'horms whelked and waved like the enridg_d sea' (IV.6.71), this work is the trace of a narrative - of a journey of the gaze - during the course of which the cryptic question of the gastropod - 'Why a Snail [_]?' (I.5.26) - does not cease to be developed and transformed. Incorporating a wide-ranging post-structuralist critique, the study aims to bring to light the particular functions of this 'revealing detail' in both its textual and visual dimension so as to put forward a new and innovatory understanding of the tragedy of King Lear.
Praise for Shakespeare's Spiral
"'The Spiral' is at once beautiful and rare." — Juliet Fleming, New York University
"In this witty and moving book, Gleyzon twists natural history, biopolitics, and the ecology of signs into a single spiral of incarnate thought, presenting the snail as both an object and a method for contemporary engagement with major and minor life forms of the past and present." — Julia Reinhard Lupton, University of California, Irvine
"An evocative, genuinely exploratory study—rangy and surprising. Gleyzon combines an extraordinary range of theoretical reference with a refined attentiveness to the poetics of text and language." — Christopher Pye, Williams College