The Afterlives of Samson Agonistes on Stage
Date Issued
2014
Date
2014
Author(s)
Li, Pin-Han
Abstract
Although Samson Agonistes has been one of the focuses of Miltonic scholarship in recent decades, adaptations of Samson Agonistes have tended to be neglected by Miltonic scholars. This dissertation focuses on adaptations, West to East, through their contexts. Having established the contexts for the different adaptations, chapter two then establishes the emotional context of Samson Agonistes to discuss Milton’s appropriation of the biblical texts, his redefinition of tragedy and tragic hero based on Aristotle’s Poetics, and historical backgrounds in the recreation of his Samson through Samson’s emotional architecture. The third chapter explores Handel’s adaptation of Samson Agonistes in 1743 to discuss how effectively Handel’s Oratorio Samson foregrounds this emotional hero through music, and how Handel’s Samson works for his own political and historical contexts in terms of adaptation theory. The fourth chapter discusses how the major adapters in the twentieth century in the West adapted this poem into stage performances based on the historical survey by Professor Timothy J. Burbey in his Milton: the Dramatist. The fifth chapter analyzes the recent and only Japanese adaptation of Samson Agonistes, Noh Samson. It also discusses how Mr. Mutsuo Takahashi, a globally known Japanese poet and a writer of this Noh adaptation, reinvented an Eastern Samson in the context of Zen Buddhism, Noh Theater, and the Japanese warrior, the samurai (侍). This is a new work of art that represents Mr. Takahashi’s critical responses to the way in which Milton presented Samson as a Hebraic, Hellenic, and Christianized hero in this poem. Hence, this chapter also discusses how successfully Mr. Takahashi recreated this new Samson, and the extent to which he contributes another way of reading in the 21st century for both the Japanese audience and Miltonists.
Subjects
參孫力士
彌爾頓
改編
情感
韓德爾的參孫
能劇
Type
thesis
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