"Shaping Fantasies": Responses to Shakespeare's Magic in Popular Culture

Date: Wednesday 15th October 2008
Time: 6.30
Venue: David Lecture Theatre, Cambridge (refreshments at 5.45 in Helmore 029)

Wonder is not a faculty which has been much indulged in recent academic responses to Shakespeare; his "genius" is a quality to be placed within quotation marks and dissected as a cultural phenomenon rather than viewed with awe. Popular culture, by contrast, is fully alive to the magic in (and of) Shakespeare's plays, tapping into a natural human appetite for wonder, and reflecting a sense that something out of the ordinary, even magical, happens when a great work of literature is created. In this inaugural lecture Sarah Annes Brown will explore the relationship between the creative and magical arts with particular reference to Neil Gaiman's award winning recreation of A Midsummer Night's Dream in his celebrated series of graphic novels, "The Sandman."

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