Múltiplos Falstaffs: releituras contemporâneas do personagem shakesperiano.

Abstract

Sir John Falstaff, a famous Shakespearean character, made his first appearance on the Elizabethan stage with the staging of the historical drama Henry IV (1597-1598), in the role of Prince Hal's incorrigible companion and, later, the rogue in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597-1598). Falstaff won over the audience with his admirable ability to entertain and make everyone laugh. Even after Shakespeare's death, the character continued to be reread and adapted not only for theater, but also for cinema, TV, operas and other literary productions. Such productions add a new look at the starting material, in a continuous process of reframing. Therefore, this thesis proposes the analysis of three reinterpretations of Falstaff in three contemporary novels (one of them written in the 20th century and the other two, in the 21st century): Falstaff (1976), written by Robert Nye; Falstaff’s Big Gamble (2012), written by Hank Quense; and finally, The Falstaff Vampire Files (2011), written by Lynne Murray. This analysis will be developed by taking into account the two parts of Henry IV, by Henry V (1599) and the comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor as well. We will discuss how the selected works reread the character Sir John Falstaff, establishing different points of contact with the Shakespearean Falstaff, while creating new connections with different texts. In line with the reflections of Robert Stam (2000) and Linda Hutcheon (2011), we will approach the listed works as adaptations that result from the convergence of diverse textual surfaces. We will start by discussing the construction of Falstaff by William Shakespeare and then move on to the specifics of each of the novels, mapping and discussing the intricate and diverse dialogical-intertextual relationships that they establish not only with their source texts, but also with other texts. Our analysis will be mediated by reflections by other authors and theorists, such as James C. Bulman (2004), Irving Ribner (1972), Friedrich Nietzsche (2003), Mikhail Bakhtin (1987; 2002; 2008), François Laroque (1998), Graham Holderness (1992), Linda Hutcheon (1988), Jacques Derrida (2006), among others.