셰익스피어 연구자의 관점에서 본 『스테이션 일레븐』의 셰익스피어 활용

Abstract

Emily St. John Mandel’s dystopian fiction Station Eleven foregrounds Shakespeare in full measure. Projecting plague-ridden Shakespeare’s England onto the narrative surface, the novel extensively employs all that is associated with Shakespeare: his plays and drama troupe, the misery of contemporary England, the socio-cultural role of playhouses including the Globe, the theatrical conventions, the religiopolitical conflicts surrounding stage performance, etc. Mandel’s full-fledged appropriation of Shakespeare is an indisputable marker of his privileged position in the novel. But her authorial preference for Shakespeare can hardly constitute “Shakespeare essentialism.” Mandel’s use of Shakespeare is complicated and multidimensional to the extent that it neither fully confirms the novel’s presumable optimistic vision nor necessarily empowers Shakespeare as a restoring agent after the collapse of civilization. The accidental nature of the apocalyptic disaster and the survivors’ regressive nostalgia for the capitalist civilization confine Shakespeare’s role to the structural backdrop of the novel.