Julius Caesar'S Self-Created Image And Its Dramatic Afterlife (Bloomsbury Studies In Classical Reception) - 9781474245753

The book explores Julius Caesar's evolution from a historical personality to a dramatic character. Caesar's self-representation is seen to have a decisive impact on this process: in his Commentaries, Caesar constructs his image as a supreme commander characterised by exceptional celerity and ensuing omnipresence; he is also defined by the heightened sense of self-dramatization achieved by the self-referential use of the third person and the utilization of various dramaturgical techniques. These qualities create a portrait of a quasi-divine hero inhabiting a literary-historical reality. Channelled through Lucan's epic Bellum Civile and ancient historiography, these Caesarean qualities become integral to major dramatic texts, such as Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, George Chapman's The Tragedy of Caesar and Pompey, Handel's opera Giulio Cesare in Egitto and Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra. Analysis of the plays, as well as examples of performance history and film adaptations contribute to the understanding of how these dramatic works reflect, highlight or contradict the aspects identified as intrinsic to Caesar's self-representation and, as a result, engage actively in the process of reception of Caesar's iconic and controversial personality.

• | Author: Miryana Dimitrova
• | Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• | Publication Date: Dec 14, 2017
• | Number of Pages: 256 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover/LITERARY CRITICISM
• | ISBN-10: 1474245757
• | ISBN-13: 9781474245753