Loading...
Shakespeare as Interface: Audiences, Readers, and User Experience
Tanner, Suzanne
Tanner, Suzanne
Citations
Altmetric:
Abstract
While “interface” is a modern term mostly associated with genres of new media that involve screens, this dissertation argues that applying the concepts of interface theory anachronistically onto “old” media, in particular Shakespeare’s drama, reorients our understanding of drama from one of mimetic artifact to one of designed user experience. Applying an interface perspective changes the critical question asked about drama from “What does this play represent or mean?” to “What did the audience experience, and how did the play design that experience?” While the first question will remain a foundational critical question for literary dramatic interpretation, the shift to the second question moves interrogative focus away from what drama is toward a focus on how drama works. In other words, an interface perspective probes how drama creates experiences for its users. This project approaches literary and performative drama as an assemblage of media forms (“media” being another term more modern in origin with a complex set of meanings), and argues for literary history as a history of media concepts, which is why interface theory has something to say about Shakespearean drama. The issues that an interface perspective focuses on – user experience and designed access – have always been present to a greater or lesser degree in the history of literary production and study. They are dressed in different terms or form an undercurrent to debates about mimetic imitation, rhetoric versus communication, the page versus the stage, or any other number of issues, but the framework of the interface reorganizes these familiar concepts of literary study to reveal new relationships. An interface perspective turns Shakespeare’s drama into something that is “used” by audiences rather than merely watched or read.
Description
Date
2023-05-31
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Kansas
Collections
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Keywords
English literature, Audience, Drama, Interface, Media, Shakespeare, User Experience