Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Reflections of the Aging Caesar: Drama as Cultural Perspective

Reflections of the Aging Caesar: Drama as Cultural Perspective This article affirms the view that literature transmits multiple reflections on human life that shape social mores. Examining stereotypes of age in literature as socially constructed artifacts reveals the prevailing attitudes toward aging during that time. This study focuses on the aging Julius Caesar in William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Julius Caesar and in George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra. Writing 300 years apart, these two great playwrights inscribe both positive and negative models of aging, reflecting views in their eras that persist today. This article identifies these models, then explores them from a Lacanian standpoint, showing that each dramatist focuses on Caesar's ego development through the opinions of other characters. Offering a primarily negative view of aging, Shakespeare emphasizes the fragmented mirror images that other characters hold up to Caesar. Shaw self-consciously counters Shakespeare by foregrounding Caesar as subject, who beholds his aging self in the mirror of others' opinions while enacting a positive model of aging. Tracing this long tradition of aging stereotypes found in the two plays can be useful as scholars continue to reconstruct society's attitudes toward aging. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Aging and Identity Springer Journals

Reflections of the Aging Caesar: Drama as Cultural Perspective

Download PDF
12 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/reflections-of-the-aging-caesar-drama-as-cultural-perspective-8i5S5DPVlV
Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 by Human Sciences Press, Inc.
Subject
Social Sciences; Sociology, general
ISSN
1087-3732
eISSN
1573-3491
DOI
10.1023/A:1020765621933
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This article affirms the view that literature transmits multiple reflections on human life that shape social mores. Examining stereotypes of age in literature as socially constructed artifacts reveals the prevailing attitudes toward aging during that time. This study focuses on the aging Julius Caesar in William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Julius Caesar and in George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra. Writing 300 years apart, these two great playwrights inscribe both positive and negative models of aging, reflecting views in their eras that persist today. This article identifies these models, then explores them from a Lacanian standpoint, showing that each dramatist focuses on Caesar's ego development through the opinions of other characters. Offering a primarily negative view of aging, Shakespeare emphasizes the fragmented mirror images that other characters hold up to Caesar. Shaw self-consciously counters Shakespeare by foregrounding Caesar as subject, who beholds his aging self in the mirror of others' opinions while enacting a positive model of aging. Tracing this long tradition of aging stereotypes found in the two plays can be useful as scholars continue to reconstruct society's attitudes toward aging.

Journal

Journal of Aging and Identity – Springer Journals

Published: Oct 13, 2004

References

  • The Feminist Reader
    Beer, G.
  • The Anatomy of Greatness i
    Berst, C. A.
  • Patriarchal Self Silencing in Shakespeare's Early Roman Plays
    Carducci, J.
  • “I Have Seen More Years Than You”: Youth and Age i
    Chapman, R.
  • The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America.
    Cole, T. R.
  • Aging and Identity: A Humanities Perspective.
  • British Drama 1890 to 1950: A Critical History.
    Dietrich, R. F.
  • Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries.
    Dollimore, J.
  • The Fountain of Age.
    Friedan, B.
  • Ecrits: A Selection.
    Lacan, J.
  • Shaw and Shakespeare: Why Not
    Leary, D.
  • Fathers and Daughters in Shakespeare and Shaw.
    Lenker, L. T.
  • Social Role and the Making of Identity in Julius Caesar
    O'Dair, S.
  • “In the Spirit of Men There Is No Blood”: Blood as a Trope of Gender i
    Gail Kern, P.
  • The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.
    Shakespeare, W.
  • Our Theatres in the Nineties.
    Shaw, G. B.
  • The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays With Their Prefaces.
    Shaw, G. B.
  • Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siecle
    Showalter, E.
  • Shaw's Caesar and the Mythic Hero
    Vesonder, T. G.
  • Society and the Individual in Shakespeare's Conception of, Character
    Weimann, R.
  • Shaw on Shakespeare: An Anthology of Bernard Shaw's Writings on the Plays and Productions of Shakespeare