Brief description of the project

Although Shakespeare’s sources have long been identified and extensively studied, their early modern editions have not been thoroughly examined in relation to their European dissemination, translation, and adaptation. While we tend to take for granted the textual stability of the sources, compared to the radical instability of Shakespeare’s plays, a closer exploration of the actual editions that may have been available at the time shows relevant textual differences bearing upon their reception. What did Shakespeare and his contemporaries actually read? Which were their reading practices, interests, and purposes? To what extent do cultural similarities and differences emerge from a comparison of these texts? How can we read them today? The Shakespeare’s Narrative Sources: Italian Novellas and Their European Dissemination (SENS) digital project aims at providing a flexible, inclusive, and freely accessible database which, as a research tool, allows for a comparative study of Shakespeare’s Italian sources and their European mediations. Shakespeare’s place in our cultural heritage is undeniable and firmly established, but a wider exploration of the processes in which he refashioned Italian narratives and their French, Spanish, and English mediations will enable us tore conceptualise how important his works are as they read us just as we read them: “we bring to the plays our own emotional, political, ideological and creative energies” (Smith 2019). In creating an unprecedented and sustainable space where all these “energies” combine, the SENS project will prove to be an innovative tool for presenting Shakespeare and his narrative sources, in Frow’s words, as ‘valuable’(2005): that is, having a social and public significance, which makes them eligible for inclusion in the spheres of study and criticism, and, most importantly, in our shared European cultural heritage, and thus contribute to our growth both as individuals and members of a democratic and inclusive community. The study of Shakespeare’s use of his sources via the SENS project can contribute to stimulating our own creativity and imaginative faculties as well as complicating our ideas of agency, cultural identity, social life, and psychological well-being. SENS can thus aim at inscribing itself in the “eudaimonic turn” in literary studies (Pawelski and Moores 2013), fostering well-being by affirming human values, as part of a growing trend which has come under the umbrella term “positive humanities” which “allow us to develop as individuals, connect deeply with others, and live together in communities and societies” (Tay and Pawelski 2021, xvii). We want to enable and broaden the access to such effects to the blind and visually impaired, and create an interactive, open-access platform which ideally connects us, combining textual studies, the materiality of the book, literary and performance studies, multilingual approaches, and the possibilities offered by the new technologies.

Goals

The project aims at connecting literary theory, comparative studies, philology and the digital turn in the humanities for the preservation of the cultural heritage with a strong view to social wellbeing. The project will offer:

a. innovative academic research;

b. innovative multimedia and digital archiving;

c. innovative accessibility devices with a view to wellbeing and an inclusive society through “positive humanities”.

On the level of theoretical reflection and textual study, it will offer innovative contributions

• to the study of sources and receptions in the light of: (a) the European circulation of adaptations, editions, translations etc.; (b) reuses and memory practices; (c) the eudaimonic turn and positive humanities;
• to the study of Italian literary and cultural models and discourses in early modern English drama (Marrapodi 2014 and AIRS series);
• to the reflection on the processes of transposition of narrative texts into dramatic form (narrative/drama interaction) (see Serpieri et al. 1988; Bigliazzi 2016);

On the level of cultural heritage enhancement from the perspective of wellbeing in a human-centred society, it will favour participation, inclusivity and accessibility in accordance with European policies on

a. inclusion and wellbeing (Eu4Future action lines: https://www.edf-feph.org/the-future-of-europe-for-persons-with-disabilities/);

b. cultural heritage enhancement through digital transition from the perspective of wellbeing in a human-centred society (see Europeana: https://www.europeana.eu/en)

Expected Results

• a unique archive devoted to intertextual and interdiscursive relations:
• the Verona unit will revise and implement the current section of the SENS database dedicated to Romeo and Juliet and will carry out the diplomatic, semidiplomatic, and modernised editions of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Much Ado about Nothing, Measure for Measure, and The Twelfth Night as well as all the Italian, French and Spanish resources (Drakakis 2021) and texts connected with them (from Cinthio’s Epitia to Whetstone’s Heptameron, from Ariosto to Spenser and Harington, from Bandello, Belleforest and Barnaby Rich, from Boccaccio, Montemayor, and Elyot), including a section with paralogues and analogues;
• the Bari unit will carry out the diplomatic, semidiplomatic, and modernised editions of The Merchant of Venice and Othello as well as all the Italian and English resources and texts connected with them, including a story from G. Fenton’s Certain Tragicall Discourses (1567), Ser Giovanni Fiorentino’s Il Pecorone, the fourteenth story of Masuccio Salernitano’s Il Novellino;
• the Roma unit will carry out the diplomatic, semidiplomatic, and modernised editions of The Merry Wives of Windsor and Cymbeline as well as all the Italian resources and texts connected with them, including passages from Bandello’s Novelle, Boccaccio’s Decameron, Fiorentino’s Il Pecorone, Straparola’s Le piacevoli notti, Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, and their French/English translations;
• the Napoli unit will carry out the diplomatic, semidiplomatic, and modernised editions of The Taming of the Shrew and of All’s Well That Ends Well as well as all the English, Italian, and French resources and texts connected with them, including Boccaccio’s Decameron and Painter’s The Palace of Pleasure; Antoine Le Maçon’s translation of the Decameron; Bernardo Accolti’s Virginia; Ariosto’s Suppositi and Gascoigne’s Supposes.
• accurate digital scholarly editions and multimedia materials (audio files) to be applied to a specific case of disability (visually impaired and blind) and be understood as a replicable model (on a methodological level)
• the Bari unit will promote the accessibility and circulation of Shakespeare’s Italian narrative sources in a wider cultural ecosystem by joining forces with digital archives like Wikisource and, on the basis of an established agreement between the University of Bari and Unione Italiana Ciechi e Ipovedenti, will guarantee the project a consulting service to adapt the technical characteristics of the archive to the specific needs of visually impaired users;
• audio visual recordings as “performance footnotes”;
• strongly interoperable possibilities and interactivity to encourage academic study as well as general reading and active participation at different levels, including “gamification”.

• 25/11/2024 – SENS project First Year Seminar –

  “’Within the book and volume of my brain’: riflessioni sul valore eudemonico del testo (shakespeariano)” – Università degli studi di Napoli l’Orientale and online

• 25-28 June 2024 – Participation in the TWB Meeting in Amsterdam – The SENS Project Roundtable: 
  Female Gendering Across Cultures: from Shakespeare Back to the Italian Resources
• 21-23 March 2024 – Participation in the RSA International Conference in Chicago – Panel session on “Memory and Re-use: Revisiting Shakespeare Italian (Re)sources Digitally“
• 7-10 March 2024 – Northeast Modern Language Association – FIFTY-FIFTH ANNUAL CONVENTION – Panel 3.34 Shakespeare and Italy: Influence, Reception, and Adaptation – Silvia Bigliazzi “Gendering Romeo and Juliet: From Da Porto to Shakespeare”

Pubblications:

• Bigliazzi, Silvia, ed. 2024. Revisiting Shakespeare’s Italian Resources: Memory and Reuse. New York: Routledge.
• Bigliazzi, Silvia. 2024. “‘A Tragedie Written in Greeke’: How Jocasta was Made ‘Classical’“. Early Theatre 27 (2).