Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is often hailed as the greatest literary example of romantic tragedy, but the aspect of tragedy became obscured over time through a variety of popular culture iterations of the play. Now, the play represents a generally accepted model for the ideal romance, so much so that the artist Taylor Swift wrote a song titled “Love Story” that rewrites the plot of Romeo and Juliet to conclude with a happy ending. This essay attempts to address how Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is a discursive model for the ultimate tragic romance that has shifted over time to stand in as, simply, the ultimate romance. While Romeo and Juliet is hardly the original model for tragic romance, its discursive nature is derived from the fact
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A male becomes a young females’ “everything” whom she would “die for.” Romeo and Juliet heavily influences today’s young adult fiction, and novels such as Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, perpetuate the ideal of being willing to die for a romantic partner as a standard for true love. Twilight’s Bella literally gives her human life to be with her romantic love interest, Edward. One must question why literature would perpetuate such detrimental relationship standards as normative and how this translates into real-life adolescence partnerships. The concept of Freud’s pleasure principle and compulsion to repeat can offer answers as to why Romeo and Juliet now translates to a normative relationship that other young adult literature emulates leading young females to mimic Juliet and Bella’s …show more content…
Conversely, there is no argument that William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is a straightforward romantic tragedy. Two lovers meet, but are unable to be together due to familial allegiances, so their logical course of action is faking death which leads to their eventual suicides. Clearly, there is no happy ending or hint of a healthy relationship. However, as Marjorie Garber contends in her book Shakespeare and Modern Culture, that Romeo and Juliet morphed into “the normative love story of our time” (8). Adolescents frequently reference Romeo and Juliet as a model for the ultimate romance. This shift from the genre of romantic tragedy to the genre of romance can be attributed to a variety of popular culture iterations of Romeo and Juliet. In a Reference Guide to English Literature, John M. Lyon writes, “Romeo and Juliet has provided our culture with its archetype of tragic young love,
A male becomes a young females’ “everything” whom she would “die for.” Romeo and Juliet heavily influences today’s young adult fiction, and novels such as Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, perpetuate the ideal of being willing to die for a romantic partner as a standard for true love. Twilight’s Bella literally gives her human life to be with her romantic love interest, Edward. One must question why literature would perpetuate such detrimental relationship standards as normative and how this translates into real-life adolescence partnerships. The concept of Freud’s pleasure principle and compulsion to repeat can offer answers as to why Romeo and Juliet now translates to a normative relationship that other young adult literature emulates leading young females to mimic Juliet and Bella’s …show more content…
Conversely, there is no argument that William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is a straightforward romantic tragedy. Two lovers meet, but are unable to be together due to familial allegiances, so their logical course of action is faking death which leads to their eventual suicides. Clearly, there is no happy ending or hint of a healthy relationship. However, as Marjorie Garber contends in her book Shakespeare and Modern Culture, that Romeo and Juliet morphed into “the normative love story of our time” (8). Adolescents frequently reference Romeo and Juliet as a model for the ultimate romance. This shift from the genre of romantic tragedy to the genre of romance can be attributed to a variety of popular culture iterations of Romeo and Juliet. In a Reference Guide to English Literature, John M. Lyon writes, “Romeo and Juliet has provided our culture with its archetype of tragic young love,