Traumatic Redemption Chronotope as Theoretical Model to Study Serial Shakespeares

T his article proposes a methodology to study Shakespearean intertexts in contemporary complex TV series. While the presence of Shakespeare’s inter-texts in contemporary complex TV seems ubiquitous, a sustained and theoretically focused academic study of the impact of Shakespeare in these works has not been produced. Reviewers and social media users’ comments have proposed readings of the series pointing at the importance of the series’ redemptive qualities. Taking Hannah Wolfe Eisner’s “Into the Middle of Things: Traumatic Redemption and the Politics of Form” as basis, I am presenting a theoretical model to study serial Shakespeares, with which I am referring to a limited corpus of American complex TV series appropriating Shakespeare’s texts, as narratives embedded in a cultural politics of trauma and redemption. Additionally, it shows that such series potentially work as guidelines to study the overall impact of traumatic redemption in other contemporary adaptations of Shakespearean plays.