A Shakespearean Quote in the Modern American Retellings of Romeo and Juliet at the Turn of the 20th–21st Centuries
- Issue:
- Received: 18 Feb. 2025
- Approved after reviewing: 10 Sept. 2025
- Date of publication: 25 Dec. 2025
- УДК / UDK: 821.111(73).0
- Publication Type: Research Article
- DOI:
- EDN:
- Abstract:
The article deals with the use of quotes in literary retellings of W. Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Novels, written by modern American writers around the turn of the XX–XXI centuries, served as a case study. The tragedy Romeo and Juliet is included into the “core” of American English-speaking culture. Quotes can be found both in the text and the paratext of the retellings. They are highlighted in the text by a different font, quotation marks, and the distance between the quote and the author’s text. Sometimes the quotes are inserted in the retelling without highlighting them in any way. The study showed that quotes in literary retellings perform several functions, for example: they can influence the structure of the plot and the choice of the scenes included in the novel, since they allude to certain contexts of the source text; they help the plot movement by predicting the characters’ future actions; they reveal the characters’ personalities and emphasize qualities, important for explaining the characters’ actions. Quotes placed in chapter headings clarify the structure of the text and deepen its understanding. Heading quotes constitute a text of their own; understanding a literary retelling based on a Shakespearean tragedy, depends on how well the reader knows the source text and can relate it to the original. Including quotes in the text of the retelling allows the writer to offer explanations to the Shakespearean text in the style and language that is most understandable to his reader.
- Keywords: American literature, literary retelling, William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, source text, paratext, quotation, plot, allusion, character
- For citation:
Nenarokova, Maria. “A Shakespearean Quote in the Modern American Retellings of Romeo and Juliet at the Turn of the 20th–21st Centuries.” Literature of the Americas, no. 19 (2025): 104–135. https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-7894-2025-19-104-135
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