Afterlife of Ophelia

KAARA L. PETERSONAssociate Professor of English atMiami University, USA. DEANNE WILLIAMSAssociate Professor of English atYork University, UK.

'This richly varied collection builds on Elaine Showalter's famous 1985 essay, 'Representing Ophelia,' to examine multiple representations of Ophelia in various times and places. The images, both described and captured in illustrations, are fascinating in themselves and the collection as a whole constitutes a revealing contribution to cultural history, demonstrating that Ophelia is indeed a mirror in which successive cultures have seen their own anxieties and values.' Phyllis Rackin, professor of English Emerita, University of Pennsylvania 'This is a simply fabulous collection of essays on 'the blighted girlhood' of Ophelia, whose fate has fascinated readers for centuries. Far from being a static figure, however, this volume shows that Ophelia has changed with the times, and her fate reveals as much about the cultural dynamics of representing femininity as it does about Shakespeare's character in her original rendition.' Dympna C. Callaghan, William Safire Professor of Modern Letters, Syracuse University

• Introduction: The Afterlives of Ophelia – Kaara L. Peterson & Deanne Williams 'I've got a feeling for Ophelia': Childhood and Performance – Seth Lerer Reviewing Ophelia – Jeremy Lopez An Actress Prepares: Seven Ophelias – Neil Taylor Rebooting Ophelia: Social Media and the Rhetorics of Appropriation – Sujata Iyengar and Christy Desmet The Paradox of Female Agency: Ophelia and East Asian Sensibilities – Alexander Huang The Lady Vanishes: Aurality and Agency in Cinematic Ophelias – Kendra Preston Leonard Enter Ofelia Playing on a Lute – Deanne Williams Ophelia's Wake – Paul Menzer Ophelia and Some Theatrical Successors – Lois Potter Ophélie in Nineteenth-Century French Painting – Delphine Gervais de Lafond At the Margins: Ophelia in Modern and Contemporary Photography – Remedios Perni Double Take: Tom Hunter's The Way Home (2000) – Kimberly Rhodes Afterword: Ophelia Then, Now, Hereafter – Coppélia Kahn