The Gap of Time : A Winter's Tale Retold
- Submitting institution
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The University of Manchester
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 51206611
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Hogarth
- ISBN
- 978-1781090299
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- October
- Year of publication
- 2015
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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A - SALC
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- 'The Gap of Time' marks a development in, the tradition of Shakespeare adaptation, finding in the world of interactive video games and an inventive analogy for the Elizabethan theatre’s interactions with its audiences. The novel reflects on its own method—especially on the ways in which versions re-animate their originals—through its reworking of the pastoral form and its imagination of the Parisian poet Gerard de Nerval. Optimistically imagined futures are here twofold: in the ways in which art may survive its moment; and in the next generation not being condemned to repeat the traumatic mistakes of their parents.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Part of a series of commissions from Vintage imprint Hogarth to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, 'The Gap of Time' joins, and marks a new development in, the long tradition of Shakespeare adaptation. The novel maintains Shakespeare’s focus on particular themes, including those central to contemporary criticism of the plays (gender roles, inheritance, power, legitimacy and authority). The magical and fantastical element of 'The Winter’s Tale' have been a problem for productions of the play, and screen versions, and for readings which would view it as contemporary, a problem for which this novel finds a solution by relaying that element of the play to the world of video games, whose interactivity is also an inventive analogy for the Elizabethan theatre’s interactions with its audiences. The video game also allows the novel to imagine time’s frozen, waiting aspect in a way which resembles the famous ‘gaps of time’ in the play. The novel reflects on its own method—especially on the ways in which versions re-animate their originals—through its reworking of the pastoral form and its imagination of the Parisian poet Gerard de Nerval, whose poems are recast in the songs of another of the book’s characters. The novel also takes up the play’s interest in trauma, and in the possibility that time may, improbably, be able to heal trauma. In the novel, such optimistically imagined futures are twofold, in the ways in which art may survive its moment (as in de Nerval’s case), and in the next generation optimistically imagined as not being condemned to repeat the traumatic mistakes of their parents. The novel’s other dimension is its reclamation of a very different kind of foundling narrative, one which echoes and rethinks the story told in Winterson’s memoir, 'Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal (2012)?'
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
