Habits of Power in Macbeth

Journal title PARADIGMI
Author/s Paola Colaiacomo
Publishing Year 2015 Issue 2015/1 Language Italian
Pages 15 P. 127-141 File size 68 KB
DOI 10.3280/PARA2015-001009
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

The collapsing of the Medieval correspondence between dress and function - a visible sign of the dissevering of "the King’s two bodies" (see E. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 1957) - is a major Shakespearean theme, epitomized in Mac beth’s question: «Why do you dress me / In borrow’d robes?» (I.iii.108-9). A question which seems to situate the hero in the old world of correspondences and analogues. The paper tentatively explores, in relation to Macbeth, the significance of Shakespeare’s reprise of that old paradigm, at the very moment of its disintegration.

Keywords: Body, Correspondence, Dress, Function, Nudity, Power.

  1. Colaiacomo P. (1979). Il teatro del principe. Calibano, 4 (La scena memorabile. Teatro e assolutismo in Inghilterra): 51-96.
  2. Colaiacomo P. (2009). Giochi di corpi e di vestiti. Il motivo del camouflage nel Macbeth di Shakespeare. Firenze Architettura, 2: 76-81.
  3. Colaiacomo P. (2010). Indossare una corona. In: Giorcelli C., a cura di. Abito e identità. Ricerche di storia letteraria e culturale. Vol. X. Roma-Palermo-São Paulo: Ila Palma: 29-61.
  4. Debord G. (1967). La société du spectacle. Paris: Buchet-Chastel (trad. it.: La società dello spettacolo. Milano: Baldini & Castoldi, 1997). Greenblatt S. (1980). Renaissance Self-fashioning. From More to Shakespeare. London: University of Chicago Press.
  5. Hegel G. W. F. (1836-38). Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, hrsg. von Hotho H. G. (1a ed.). In: Sämtliche Werke. Jubiläeumsausgabe, hrsg. von Glockner H. Voll. XII-XIV. Stuttgart: F. Frommann, 1927-28 (trad. it. di Merker N. e Vaccaro N.: Estetica. Torino: Einaudi, 1972).
  6. Kantorowicz E. (1957). The King’s Two Bodies. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  7. Machiavelli N. (1995). Il principe, a cura di Inglese G. Torino: Einaudi.
  8. Montaigne M. de (1962). De l’usage de se vestir. In: Oeuvres complètes. Paris: Gallimard: 221-24.
  9. More T. (1516). Utopia, transl. and ed. Adams R. M. New York-London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992.
  10. Shakespeare W. (1992-96). The Everyman Signet Shakespeare. 8 vols. London: Everyman’s Library.
  11. Shakespeare W. (1997). Macbeth, a cura di Lombardo A., con testo a fronte. Milano: Feltrinelli.
  12. Spurgeon C. (1935). Shakespeare’s Imagery and What It Tells Us. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988, DOI: 10.1017/CBO978051162039
  13. Stubbes P. (1583). The Anatomie of Abuses, ed. Kidnie M. J. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in conjunction with the Renaissance English Text Society, 2002.

Paola Colaiacomo, Macbeth. Gli abiti del potere in "PARADIGMI" 1/2015, pp 127-141, DOI: 10.3280/PARA2015-001009