Abstract
This essay investigates the Romantic effects of Shakespearean "touchstones" in popular cultural representations of Canadian curriculum to interpellate girls in the contested institutional space of public education. The essay's genealogy of Shakespeare and gender-curricular politics opens with Lucy Maude Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, a popular literary text published shortly after the Victorian-imperial institution of public education. The argument juxtaposes Montgomery's pedagogical and prescriptive adaptation of Shakespeare with Skye Sweetnam's "Billy S.," a 2004 popular song that articulates a rebellious appeal to the imagination, not unlike Anne's own. The paper concludes with questions about how these uses of Shakespeare in popular representations of school and Romantic ideology produce a gender-coded literary curriculum, and students, in English Canadian public education.
| Original language | Canadian English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Borrowers & Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare & Appropriation |
| Volume | 3 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 May 2007 |
Keywords
- William Shakespeare
- Popular Music
- education