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Seminar: 24 October 2008 (Chair: Cüneyt Çakirlar, more ... )

A screening and discussion of Edward II (dir. Derek Jarman, 1991) 90 mins

Abstract

Edward II was written by Christopher Marlowe in 1591. The play begins with the death of King Edward I, followed by the accession of his son Edward II to the throne and his queer-homosocial relationship with Piers Gaveston who was banished from the kingdom and re-invited by Edward II just after the death of the father: ‘My father is deceased, come Gaveston!’ the first line says. Marlowe’s drama is a story of love, revenge and ambition. Derek Jarman’s cinematic adaptation of Marlowe’s play not only pastiches but also strategically exploits the original text by means of his filmic imagery. Jarman’s film, regarded as the ‘epiphanic moment’ of the 1990s’ New Queer Cinema, is an attempt to update, to re-fictionalize, the history with contemporary queer eyes.

Suggested reading

Aaron, Michele (ed.). New Queer Cinema: A Critical Reader ( Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004).

Armstrong, Raymond. ‘More Jiggery that Pokery: Derek Jarman’s Edward II’, British Queer Cinema, edited by Robin Griffiths ( London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 145-56.

Arroyo, José. ‘Death, Desire and Identity: The Political Unconscious of “New Queer Cinema”’, Activating Theory: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Politics, edited by Joséph Bristow and Angela Wilson (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1993), pp. 70-96.

Tweedie, James. ‘The Suspended Spectacle of History: The tableau vivant in Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio’, Screen 44:4, 2003, pp. 379-403.

Viegener, Matias. ‘Men Who Kill Boys and the Boys Who Love Them’, Critical Quarterly 36:1, 1994, pp. 105-14.

This page last modified 26 September, 2012 by UCL Mellon Admin