| Popis: |
In c.1537 Thersites made his entrance on the English stage, and declared himself as belonging to Homer at the start of a comic interlude that has typically been considered (like Thersites himself) as travestying high epic into low, scurrilous entertainment. This chapter examines the intersection between staged versions of the character Thersites and the early modern period’s ongoing reception of Homer’s Iliad. Considering the Thersites interlude as representative of a broader cultural conception of Thersites, the chapter argues that a peculiarly English, and explicitly metatheatrical, Thersites emerges from a series of receptions-within-receptions, as Homer’s character was approached via refractions across a number of later classical texts. Moreover, when resurrected on the public stage in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (c.1602) and Thomas Heywood’s two-part drama The Iron Age (c.1611), this alternative, composite Thersites offers a significant commentary on the offstage reception of Homer’s epic text. |
