O’Neill, Stephen
(2021)
“And Who Will Write Me?”: Maternalizing Networks of Remembrance in Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet.
Shakespeare, 17 (2).
pp. 210-229.
ISSN 1745-0918
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Maggie O’Farrell’s award-winning novel Hamnet explores the
tradition that the death of Shakespeare’s son inaugurates the father’s play. Reopening Hamlet’s metaphorical grave, the novel brings its reader into the play’s imagined point of origin. It does so, this article argues, less out of an interest in Shakespeare himself or the primacy of father/son dyad than in acts of recovery that take the reader into a network of linked early modern lives. In addition to the
extraordinary vitality the novel gives to the young boy,
particular focus is placed on Agnes, its imagining of Anne
Hathaway. Drawing on the fields of motherhood studies
and memory studies, as well as Shakespeare adaptation, I
argue that Hamnet creates networks of remembrance that
are significantly maternalized. These include Hamlet and an
epigraph citing Stephen Greenblatt’s Hamnet essay, as well
as memories and stories the Hamlet tradition displaces.
Reading the novel through a series of interrelated themes –
doubles, memories and ghosts – the article explores how
O’Farrell engages with Hamlet as its inherited memory
space and announces itself as a novel interested in
maternal memories, spaces and stories. As such, the novel
provides fascinating insight into how a literary text
produces memory and invites us to remember a classic text
like Hamlet differently.
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Additional Information: |
Cite as: O'Neill, S. 2021, ""And Who Will Write Me?": Maternalizing Networks of Remembrance in Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet", Shakespeare (London, England), vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 210-229. |
| Keywords: |
Adaptation; Hamlet;
memory; motherhood;
Shakespeare; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > School of English, Media & Theatre Studies > English |
| Item ID: |
17614 |
| Identification Number: |
https://doi.org/10.1080/17450918.2020.1867627 |
| Depositing User: |
Stephen O'Neill
|
| Date Deposited: |
28 Sep 2023 10:23 |
| Journal or Publication Title: |
Shakespeare |
| Publisher: |
Routledge |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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