Shakespearean Excess: The Rhetoric of Appropriation in the Information Age

This dissertation demonstrates the parallels between the Early Modern rhetorical tradition and new media production. In particular, I use the stylistic ideal of “copiousness” —a faculty for transformation and amplification—to address the superabundance of Shakespeare adaptations circulating in modern media. I illustrate how Shakespeare learned to draw on and transform literary models from classical and early modern traditions while studying at the Latin grammar school in Stratford. I then put Shakespeare’s artistic imitations into conversation with a series of media test cases ranging from film adaptation to television scripts; from lowbrow commodity culture to video games and social media.I argue that the modern adaptations covered in this study extend imitative and transformative paradigms long part of rhetorical education. Early Modern appropriators of classical texts and ideas relied on doctrines of imitation and expansion that inflect, I argue, contemporary understandings of originality or artistic ownership. These doctrines for imitation and variation also, I suggest, help us understand contemporary dilemmas in concepts like fair use, user agency, or virality. Along with these primary discussions, I also examine the language of expansion, growth, and excess that circulates the contemporary scholarly rhetoric of appropriation.