A Dictionary of Shakespeare's Classical Mythology

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Email: maguin.jeanmarie[at]gmail.com

Jean-Marie Maguin is Emeritus Professor of English Language and Literature at Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier, where he co-directed the Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise, a research team associated with the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) that is now integrated in the Institute for Research on the Renaissance, the Neo-classical Age and the Enlightenment (IRCL) at Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier. His critical work on the field of Elizabethan and Jacobean studies encompasses a mythological approach to literary texts. His works include La Nuit dans le théâtre de Shakespeare et de ses prédécesseurs (1980), William Shakespeare (in partnership with his wife, Angela Maguin, 1996), Coriolanus (2006), Everyman, ou la question de l’au-delà au Moyen Âge (2008). He is currently working on a literary portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer.

Essays more directly concerned with classical myth include:

• co-written with Jean Fuzier, “Archetypal Patterns of Horror and Cruelty in Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy”.  Cahiers Élisabéthains 19 (avril 1981): 9-25.

• “Shakespeare, Hypnos, and Thanatos : Romeo and Juliet in the Space of Myth”. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet : Texts, Contexts and Interpretation, ed. Jay L. Halio. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995, 37-48.

• “The Mythical Background of Venus and Adonis: Intertexts and Invention”. In William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis: Nouvelles Perspectives critiques, ed. Jean-Marie Maguin and Charles Whitworth. Montpellier: Astraea 9, 1999, 19-42.

Jean-Marie Maguin is Honorary President of the Société Française Shakespeare and Honorary Research Director of the CNRS.