Associate Professor
Department of English

E-Mail: fretz@mail.sysu.edu.cn

Sun Yat-sen University
School of Foreign Languages
135 West Xingang Road
Guangzhou 510275, China

Claude Fretz is Associate Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern English Literature at Sun Yat-sen University (China). He is also a Fellow of the research centre ‘European Dream-Cultures’ at Saarland University (Germany), which is funded by the German research foundation (DFG). His PhD is from the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham (UK). His research has attracted funding in China, the UK, Germany, and Luxembourg.

His primary research interest and area of publication lies with the dramatic works of Shakespeare in their early modern (Elizabethan and Jacobean) contexts, and with their classical, medieval, and European influences/connections. He is also interested in contemporary appropriations and adaptations of Shakespeare in global contexts, and is actively involved in interdisciplinary research projects related to dream cultures. Most recently, he has co-led an international and interdisciplinary investigation of representations of animal dreams, as part of which he co-organised a conference on ‘Dreams and the Animal Kingdom in Culture and Aesthetic Media’. In addition, he is guest editor of a forthcoming special issue of the Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture (ESCI, SCOPUS, and EBSCOhost) on the topic of ‘Narrating Dreams: Solution and Dissolution’.

Claude Fretz is the author of Dreams, Sleep, and Shakespeare’s Genres (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), a monograph which explores how Shakespeare uses images of dreams and sleep to define his dramatic worlds. Surveying Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, histories, and late plays, the book argues that Shakespeare systematically exploits early modern physiological, religious, and political understandings of dreams and sleep in order to reshape conventions of dramatic genre and to experiment with dream-inspired plots. Claude is also co-editor of Performing Restoration Shakespeare (Cambridge University Press, 2023), a book which arises from an AHRC-funded research project and investigates how Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare used to be performed and how they can be performed for audiences today. As part of this project, he co-organised and contributed to scholar-artist workshops at Shakespeare’s Globe in London and acted as one of the scholar-consultants for a fully sold-out professional production of Davenant's Macbeth at the Folger Theatre in Washington, D.C.

Claude has published various journal articles and book chapters on Shakespeare, on early modern literature, on representations of dreams and sleep in the Renaissance, on modern theatre practice, and on Restoration drama. His work has appeared in journals including Shakespeare, Critical Survey, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture 1660-1700, Cahiers Elisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies, Etudes Epistémè, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, and others.

He is a regular speaker and participant at international academic conferences. He has also given invited talks and public lectures in Germany, the USA, the UK, and Luxembourg, and has been interviewed by science magazines as well as mainstream national newspapers. He is a member of the British Shakespeare Association, the European Shakespeare Research Association, the Renaissance Society of America, and the Network of Cultural Dream Studies.

Academic Qualifications

2016   PhD, University of Birmingham (UK)
2012   MA English: Shakespeare in History (Distinction), University College London (UK)
2011   BA (hons) English (First Class), Royal Holloway, University of London (UK)

Research Interests

Shakespeare and early modern drama

Shakespeare’s sources and influences

Renaissance literature

Appropriations and adaptations of Shakespeare throughout history and in global contexts

Dream cultures

Animal symbolism in the Renaissance

Teaching

UNDERGRADUATE COURSES:
‘Plays and Performance’; ‘Advanced Academic Lecture Series’; ‘Introduction to Prose Literature’; ‘Renaissance Poetry’

POSTGRADUATE COURSES:
‘Shakespeare: Comedy, Tragedy, History, Romance’

Selected Publications

BOOKS

Fretz, Claude. Dreams, Sleep, and Shakespeare’s Genres. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

Eubanks Winkler, Amanda. Fretz, Claude. Schoch, Richard. Performing Restoration Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

RESEARCH ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS

Fretz, Claude, Amanda Eubanks Winkler, and Richard Schoch. ‘Introduction: New Shakespeare for a New Era’. In Performing Restoration Shakespeare, ed. Amanda Eubanks Winkler, Claude Fretz, and Richard Schoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 1—14. Full text available at https://hal.science/hal-04124633v1.

Fretz, Claude. ‘Shakespearean Boars and Dolphins: Representing Character through Animal Dreams in Richard III and Antony and Cleopatra’. Critical Survey (ISSN 1752-2293), 35:1 (2023), 44—63. Full text available at https://hal.science/hal-04124625v1. [A&HCI]

Fretz, Claude. ‘Dreaming of Serpents and Asses: Shakespeare’s Ovidian Animal Dreams in A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Shakespeare (ISSN 1745-0918), 2023. Full text available at https://hal.science/hal-03708673v1. [A&HCI]

Fretz, Claude. ‘Performing Restoration Shakespeare “Then” and “Now”: A Case Study of Davenant’s Macbeth’. Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies (ISSN 1729-6897), 48:1 (2022), 27—56. Full text available at http://www.concentric-literature.url.tw/issues/Music/2-Fretz.pdf or https://hal-hprints.archives-ouvertes.fr/hprints-03624610 [A&HCI]

Fretz, Claude. ‘”The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen”: Multisensory Dreams in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili’. Traum–Wissen–Erzählen (ISSN 2567-7993), vol. 9 (2021): Träumen mit allen Sinnen, ed. Stephanie Catani and Sophia Mehrbrey (Leiden: Brill; Paderborn: Fink), 157—177. Full text available at https://hal-hprints.archives-ouvertes.fr/hprints-03437612

Fretz, Claude. ‘”Not wond’ring at the present, nor the past”: Dreaming through Time and Space in Shakespeare’. Traum–Wissen–Erzählen (ISSN 2567-7993), vol. 8 (2021): Zeiterfahrung im Traum, ed. Christian Quintes and Laura Vordermayer (Leiden: Brill; Paderborn: Fink), 95—113. Full text available at https://hal-hprints.archives-ouvertes.fr/hprints-03437608

Fretz, Claude. ‘“marvellous and surprizing conduct”: The “Masque of Devils” and Dramatic Genre in Thomas Shadwell’s The Tempest’. Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700 (ISSN 0162-9905), 43:2 (2019), 3—28. Full text available at https://hal-hprints.archives-ouvertes.fr/hprints-03437606

Fretz, Claude. ‘The Imagination in Early Modern English Literature’. Cahiers Elisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies, 95:1 (2018), 126–9. [A&HCI]

Fretz, Claude. ‘“Full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams”: Dreams and Tragedy in Shakespeare’s Richard III’. Cahiers Elisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies (ISSN 2054-4715), 92:1 (2017), 32–49. Full text available at: https://hal-hprints.archives-ouvertes.fr/hprints-03437610 [A&HCI]

Fretz, Claude. ‘“Either his notion weakens, or his discernings | Are lethargied”: Sleeplessness and Waking Dreams as Tragedy in Julius Caesar and King Lear’. Etudes Epistémè (ISSN 1634-0450), 30 (2016). Full text available at https://journals.openedition.org/episteme/1383 [ESCI]

Fretz Claude. ‘Shakespeare the Illusionist: Magic, Dreams, and the Supernatural on Film’. Shakespeare Jahrbuch (ISSN: 1430-2527), 156 (2020), 294–5.

OTHER WRITINGS

Fretz, Claude, Amanda Eubanks Winkler, and Richard Schoch. Programme notes for Robert Richmond’s Macbeth at the Folger Theatre, Washington D.C. (4-23 September 2018).

Fretz, Claude. ‘How Restoration playwrights reshaped Shakespeare’s plays to fit changing political norms and theatrical tastes’. Shakespeare & Beyond (5 June 2018). https://shakespeareandbeyond.folger.edu/2018/06/05/how-restoration-playwrights-reshaped-shakespeare-plays/

‘Interview with Claude Fretz: Shakespeare in the Age of Restoration and the Role of Dreams in Shakespeare’s Plays’. Published in English and German on 23 April 2018 (to coincide with the anniversary of Shakespeare’s birthday) on science.lu, the FNR’s (National Research Fund of Luxembourg) website for news about science and research aimed at the general public. http://science.lu/fr/content/shakespeare-age-restoration-how-change-political-relations-affected-handling-playwrights

Fretz, Claude. ‘Performing Restoration Shakespeare: Dr Claude Fretz explains how Shakespeare’s plays found new life on the Restoration stage’. Shakespeare’s Globe Blog (30 June 2017).