Julius Caesar’s Self-Created Image and Its Dramatic Afterlife

Description

The book explores Julius Caesar’s evolution from a historical personality to a dramatic character. Caesar’s self-representation is seen to have a decisive impact on this process: in his Commentaries, Caesar constructs his image as a supreme commander characterised by exceptional celerity and ensuing omnipresence; he is also defined by the heightened sense of self-dramatization achieved by the self-referential use of the third person and the utilization of various dramaturgical techniques. These qualities create a portrait of a quasi-divine hero inhabiting a literary-historical reality. Channelled through Lucan’s epic Bellum Civile and ancient historiography, these Caesarean qualities become integral to major dramatic texts, such as Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, George Chapman’s The Tragedy of Caesar and Pompey, Handel’s opera Giulio Cesare in Egitto and Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra. Analysis of the plays, as well as examples of performance history and film adaptations contribute to the understanding of how these dramatic works reflect, highlight or contradict the aspects identified as intrinsic to Caesar’s self-representation and, as a result, engage actively in the process of reception of Caesar’s iconic and controversial personality. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgements Introduction. Caesar Is Dead. Long Live Caesar! The commentaries The plays Lucan and the historiographers Structure and scope of the book 1. ‘I Am He’: Aspects of Caesar’s Self-Representation in the Commentaries An overview of the enemy Speed/efficiency Rationality and benevolence Author–character interaction The Caesarean world beyond the narrative–the author-character and his audience Coda: the continuators 2. Efficient Benevolence, the Shadow of Hubris and an Eastern Infatuation Celerity or furor? Practical and merciful Caesar’s greatness against the rhetoric of the vanquished A balancing act – ruthless but honourable Caesar’s hubris is in the eye of the conspirator The Cleopatra subversion effect 3. ‘For Always I Am Caesar’: Performative Actualization of Caesar’s Self-Styled Image and Illeism as a Marker of Self-Institutionalization The world is a stage The power of the name Degrees of self-institutionalization The political role 4. Transhistorical and Quasi-Divine: Caesar Connecting the Threads of Time Embodying past, present and future Supernatural à la Lucan and a descendant of Venus Ghostly presence The human side of greatness Epilogue Notes References Index