Shakespeare for Snowflakes: On Slapstick and Sympathy

by Ian Burrows

Overview

Drawing on plays by Shakespeare, Sarah Kane, Sophocles, Samuel Beckett, and others, this book examines the ways in which these dramatists manipulated the actor’s body to demand laughter and/or sympathy. Ian Burrows shows how these strategies can be thought about beyond the stage-space: in the classroom, in the media, and in relation to the social construction of ‘snowflake culture’ as a 21st century phenomenon.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789041613
Publisher:	Hunt, John Publishing
Publication date:	10/01/2020
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Ian Burrows is a fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. He previously spent three years working at the University of Bristol. His research has considered the ways in which aspects of dramatic performance have been translated into text by printers and by editors. He is increasingly interested, though, in the pedagogical and cultural ramifications of such textual decisions. Ian is currently working on a monograph for Palgrave Macmillan’s Early Modern Cultural Studies series. He lives in Cambridge, UK.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 1

Prologue 3

Chapter 1 Snowflakes 5

Chapter 2 Falling Down 31

Chapter 3 Slosh 53

Chapter 4 No Two Alike 76

Chapter 5 Thaw 101

Notes and References 127

Editorial Reviews

08/10/2020

Burrows, professor of dramatic literature at Cambridge, takes a lively and nuanced foray into the culture wars, inspired by both theatrical scholarship and personal experience. The starting point is a 2017 incident in which a trigger warning appended to a course listing of his, involving the representation of trauma by Shakespeare and contemporary playwright Sarah Kane, made international headlines as an example of modern academe enabling overly sheltered, “snowflake” students ill-prepared for life’s realities. In response, Burrows draws on his literary theories of how slapstick techniques can be used to manipulate and complicate an audience’s capacity for sympathy toward a character, as done by both Shakespeare and Kane (for instance in King Lear, when the blind Gloucester tries to throw himself off a cliff and instead falls flat on his face). Burrows sees the same strategy being applied, though far less thoughtfully, to real people in public statements about “snowflake” culture, such as in Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, which he sees as denying the authenticity of people’s reactions to upsetting material. This brisk consideration of the power of words to suppress or awaken empathy strikes a timely note in the context of today’s debates about free speech and tolerance. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly