ESSE 2026 conference, Santiago de Compostela (SPAIN)

31st August - 4st September 2026

Seminar 61.- Violence in Early Modern English Drama: From Stage to Screen

From the brutality of Titus Andronicus to the psychological torment of The Duchess of Malfi, early modern English drama is saturated with violence—performed or described, symbolic or spectacular. This seminar will explore how violence has functioned as a dramatic, cultural, and ideological force in early modern English theatre, and how its representations have evolved across time, including contemporary screen adaptations and TV series that borrow early modern tropes of violence, such as House of Cards or Game of Thrones.

What did violence mean in the context of the Renaissance stage? How did playwrights like Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd, and Webster shape public perceptions of cruelty, punishment, war, and gendered aggression? How have directors and screenwriters adapted or reimagined early modern violence for film, television, and digital media—from stylized restraint to graphic realism, drawing from early modern drama to create new contemporary classics? How do these representations inform our understanding of trauma and selfhood?

We welcome proposals that investigate early modern dramaturgies of violence alongside their legacies and reconfigurations in popular screen culture. Topics may include (but are not limited to):

● Stagecraft and special effects of violence in the early modern period
● Theatrical conventions of revenge, torture, and martyrdom
● Gendered and racialized violence in performance and adaptation
● Censorship, spectatorship, and the ethics of violent representation
● Film adaptations and their reinterpretation of violent scenes
● Digital and immersive re-stagings of early modern violence
● The politics of bodily harm, trauma, and spectacle
● Pedagogical uses and abuses of violence in early modern drama.

Convenors
• Yan Brailowsky (Université Paris Nanterre), yan.brailowsky@parisnanterre.fr
• Víctor Huertas Martín (University of Valencia), victor.huertas@uv.es

Please send abstracts (300 words, excluding bibliography) before 31 January 2026.