| This dissertation presents a new, discreet edition of Percy B. Shelley's drama The Cenci. A Tragedy in Five Acts, based on the first lifetime edition (1819). The edition is fully annotated, and importantly, prefaced with critical essays situating Shelley's play in a body of historical, judicial, and fictional texts, and demonstrates how his drama functions in relation to, and draws on, earlier texts, as well as influences writers who follow. Due to the intertextual nature of this edition, a CD-Rom version with Shelley's play in hypertext is included as an additional illustration and point of access to Shelley's drama, and to related texts participating in the dynamics of the Cenci legend. The hypertext is designed to take full advantage of the transparency and three-dimensional relationship of literature, history, and popular legend relating to the Cenci family murder case, which culminated with the virtual extinction of the family of the Cenci, who were executed in Rome on September 11, 1599. The theoretical framework of the hypertext is based on Jerome McGann's groundbreaking work in the area of digital publishing. The myth of Beatrice Cenci has fascinated artists, poets, and musicians throughout the last four centuries, and adding in the 19th and 20 th centuries, photographers and cinematographers.;Contextualized in relation to Shelley's tragedy are authors John Webster, Philip Massinger, Vittorio Alfieri, Vincenzo Pieracci, Stendhal, Alexandre Dumas pere, F. D. Guerrazzi, Alfred Nobel, Corrado Ricci, Antonin Artaud, Eugenio Montale, and filmmakers Lucio Fulci and Bertrand Tavernier. As will be clear, Shelley's drama has had a consolidating effect in terms of earlier sources, for later writers, and the majority of authors post-Shelley have found it impossible to ignore his rendition of this tragedy. |
