Central to an investigation of Romeo and Juliet over the centuries is the question of how the play deals with the issue of crisis and reconciliation and how far Shakespeare was formed by the crises of his own time. Individual liberty in the face of authority as a source of communal welfare, but also of potential tyranny, and the mere ostentation of hypocritical power, run through Romeo and Juliet, resonating with the crises the play dramatises at various levels, in language and names, in family and generational conflict, in the clash between individual desire and tribal feuds and economic interests. The widespread violence thematized and dramatized in this play has been considered as mirroring a changing society undergoing contemporary class tensions and riots. The different treatment of feudal conflict and the secret marriage in Q1 and Q2 has also been questioned with reference to a culture witnessing “a clear enough pattern of change” (L. Marcus, “Shopping-Mall Shakespeare: Quartos, Folios, and Social Difference”, Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 2, 1995, pp. 161-178). The project intends to enquire Shakespeare’s own deep meditation on the relation between art, passion and civic crisis in Romeo and Juliet by focusing on local crises traceable in the history of Renaissance England, and on Shakespeare’s own insightful perception of the critical tensions lying in a European story of social and anthropological conflict that he received through a variety of mediating sources. It will suggest that this comedic tragedy profoundly dramatises the crisis at the heart of early modern family, society and the individual and will follow its impact on subsequent European appropriations and interpretations. Importo previsto relativo alle missioni: FUR Bigliazzi: euro 1.000 FUR Calvi: euro 1.000
