“Over Her Dead Body”: Print, Plaint, and Painting in Shakespeare’s Lucrece
Speaker: Prof. David Scott Kastan, Yale University
Moderator: Prof. Zhang Yan, Beijing Normal University
Time: 20:00-22:00 pm, Dec. 18, 2025 (Beijing time)
Venue: 腾讯会议: 253 323 366, passcode: 2025
In the spring of 1594, a long narrative poem by Shakespeare was published and advertised for sale in London. The title page called it Lucrece. Now the poem is usually known as The Rape of Lucrece, though it was only in 1616 (in its sixth edition) that this became the poem’s title. Perhaps this talk should be called much ado about a title, but it seems to me to offer a way to help us think about the strange poem that is about both rape and revolution, set in the legendary Roman past as the monarchy is overthrown and “the state government changed from kings to consuls.”
David Scott Kastan is the George M. Bodman Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University, having previously taught at Columbia University and at Dartmouth College. He has visited universities in China, Denmark, Egypt, England, Germany, and Hungary, among others, and has been the chief International Consultant for the CMRS, Zhejiang University since 2016. He has authored many books, including Shakespeare after Theory, Shakespeare and the Book, and On Color, all of which are available in Chinese. Presently he is working on a book on Shakespeare and Rembrandt.
世界顶尖大学合作计划项目“浙大-耶鲁中世纪与文艺复兴研究计划”资助
