The Rest is Silence: Visual Literacy and Shifting Significations in Nicki Greenberg’s Hamlet: Staged on the Page
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In late 2010, Melbourne based artist, Nicki Greenberg published her second foray into literary transposition with a primarily visual adaption of arguably Shakespeare’s greatest work: The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. This contemporary exploration of a text at the centre of the Western Canon is rich in imaged based text, and shift alienates the reader from the Canonical text, by transposing, reframing and reimag[e]ining Shakespeare’s classic. Staged on the Page is by no means unique in reimag[e]ining a classic text; however it is an elegant example of how what Henry Jenkins describes as a ‘convergence culture’ is changing literacy and literature. This chapter addresses how a converged culture creates a literary space that fosters visual literacy and examines how a shift toward expressive (rather than representative) semiotics fosters what I have termed the Feminine Lecture. I will interrogate how visual literacy challenges the strictures and grammars of the patriarchal canon: exploding, turning and seizing the canon, imbuing it with new levels of meaning for new readers.