*WINNER* Fulfilling Fate: Roman Mythological Allusions and Organic Unity in Romeo and Juliet

Abstract

This won best undergraduate paper for English.

This essay interprets formal elements in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, clarifying the play’s organic unity. While the ironic forbidden love between the children of the feuding Montague and Capulet families establishes the primary tension, the “star-cross’d lovers” ultimately resolve this tension by fulfilling their fated doom. Shakespeare’s diction, figures of speech, metaphors, irony, foreshadowing, and most importantly Ovidian, Roman allusions underpin the love/hate tension and support the play’s resolution and unified meaning. I apply New Criticism to analyze the play’s formal elements, all of which reinforce Romeo and Juliet’s fate. Most notably, I examine certain mythological allusions in the play that create an objective correlative explaining character motives, illuminate the tragic atmosphere, and foreshadow the lovers’ demise. While conducting research to expand this paper, I became aware of a gap in existing scholarship on the play’s Roman allusions. Shakespeare’s Ovidian allusions, specifically to the myths of Phaethon, Narcissus and Echo, and Pyramus and Thisbe, focus on tragedies and prophecies that foreshadow Romeo and Juliet’s double suicide and strengthen the play’s overall foreboding tone. This essay predominately focuses on these allusions to contribute to the contemporary critical discourse of Romeo and Juliet. I wrote this paper for my Introduction to English Methods and Research class in 2015. I also received a Creative Inquiry Summer Experience Grant from Tennessee Tech, to conduct library research on Romeo and Juliet at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. I presented this paper at the Medieval Renaissance Conference at University of Virginia-Wise in October 2016.