“Th’unaching scars which I should hide”: The Monstrous War-Machine in Coriolanus
I consider the issue of the wounded man with respect to Shakespeare’s paly Coriolanus, as well as to two recent adaptations that have rather raised the play’s profile: the 2011 film directed by (and starring) Ralph Fiennes, and the 2013 Donmar Warehouse production. Though, for complex reasons, Corio...
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| I publikationen: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ranam, |
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| Huvudupphovsman: | |
| Materialtyp: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Språk: | Anglais |
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Recherches anglaises et nord-américaines
2024
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| Länkar: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Sammanfattning: | I consider the issue of the wounded man with respect to Shakespeare’s paly Coriolanus, as well as to two recent adaptations that have rather raised the play’s profile: the 2011 film directed by (and starring) Ralph Fiennes, and the 2013 Donmar Warehouse production. Though, for complex reasons, Coriolanus balks at showing his scars to the public, these very scars are what the audience must first mark of Ralph Fiennes’ treatment of the character in his 2011 film: a tight close up shows us Coriolanus’ face and the damage wrought by earlier “hurts i’th’body.” How can we read Coriolanus’ body, on page and on screen, as both the agent and object of damage to himself and to the state? This essay seeks to examine the ways in which wounds and scars function in Coriolanus, both in play-text and in film, and how external and interior damage makes and unmakes the figure of the soldier. Of chief concern are the means by which bodily scars are meant to function as testament and testimony, but by which they actually fail to do—and how this failure enables the future revelation of interior (or psychological in the early sense of springing from the psyche) wounds and scars which then both drive the purported revenge plot and authorize Coriolanus’ eventual death. |
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