Petrarchism in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and its film adaptations

Abstract

Petrarchism is a literary tradition which took off and flourished in Europe around seven hundred years ago. It has been studied and examined by many scholars and a lot of work has been published on the subject. In many of the cases, however, Petrarchism has been considered a poetic tradition, and in many ways it is, since its main vehicle has been the sonnet form. However, the Petrarchan subject matter revolves around the situation of the lover, and thus this dissertation seeks to investigate William Shakespeare's application of the Petrarchan tradition into one of his most famous romance plays, Romeo and Juliet. It will analyse how Shakespeare's use of Petrarchism serves as the backbone of the whole play through his inclusion of two seemingly antithetical but actually complementary Petrarchan points of view. Finally, this dissertation will also examine how film directors have retained the Petrarchan elements in their film adaptations of Shakespeare's play in contemporary times. The main critical works used to back up my argument are: J. W. Lever's The Elizabethan Love Sonnet (1956); John Vyvyan's Shakespeare and the Rose of Love (1960); Leonard Forster's The Icy Fire - Five Studies in European Petrarchism (1969); Reed Way Dasenbrock's Imitating the Italians (1991); Michael R. G. Spiller's The Development of the Sonnet - An Introduction (1992); and Heather Dubrow' s Echoes of Desire (1995), as well as numerous critical essays.