Postured like a whore? Misreading Hermione's statue

Abstract

This article responds to Harold Bloom's call to ‘read for the clinamen’– an author's creative misprision of, or characteristic divergence from, the work of a literary antecedent – offering an account of Shakespeare's deviation from a number of influential or source texts in his The Winter's Tale. From Ovid's tale of Pygmalion to Marston's Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image; from Greene's Pandosto to Aretino's Sixteen Postures, I demonstrate how Shakespeare evokes then revokes these precursory texts, swerving from the potentially malign influence of his predecessors. Discussion concludes in analysis of the critical and intertextual over‐determination of the statue scene.

Frances Burney (Re)reads The Winter's Tale: Women's ‘Nature’ and Sociability in Evelina and The Woman-Hater

“…Shakespeare's final scene in The Winter's Tale, Langley notes, both echoes its sources and 'refuses to be limited by the determining narratives or inclinations of each variously obtrusive or insidious source'. 13 And it is true that Shakespeare's climactic moment in Paulina's gallery does offer a new take on the nature of a man's love for a woman, far more complex than merely desiring her body. Burney's revision of this scene in Evelina echoes Shakespeare's take on the Pygmalion myth as well as those of his predecessors, and projects onto them yet another perspective: that of the nature of the feelings a woman must have during the moment of self-exhibition, apparently so crucial for her social survival.…”