Amor on "They Willfully Themselves Exile From Light": Exile in Space, Stage and Metatheatre in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Zied Ben Amor, University of Sousse, has published “They willfully themselves exile from light”: Exile in Space, Stage and Metatheatre in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at 1 Theatre Academy 93 (2023). Here is the abstract.

Exile runs throughout William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Transformed characters are exiled from the human world when they change shapes. Others are forced to leave their countries and worlds to enter magical ones. Personalities and feelings shift because of magic. Examining the dichotomy between Athens and the forest and the theatrical transformations shows that exile is geographical, emotional and spatial. Exile is also endowed with a transmigrant dimension. The study of metatheatre in the play corroborates the presence of an exilic dimension. Finally, the application of Nathaniel C. Leonard’s and Robert Weimann’s fundamental notions of platea, locus, meta-platea, and meta-locus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream enables us to reach the finding that the Spectrum of Dramatic Layering hosts exilic manifestations. The research merges semantic investigations with the semiotics of theatre. Dealing with the matter of exile both from the lenses of literary and theatrical studies offers broader perspectives to understand the play’s nuances and complexities.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.