SENS: Romeo and Juliet

How did Shakespeare transform a familiar tale of doomed lovers into one of the most enduring tragedies in Western literature? This study retraces the long cultural and literary journey of Romeo and Juliet, revealing the rich network of sources, narratives, and ideas that shaped the play before it reached the Elizabethan stage. Moving from broad cultural contexts to close textual analysis, the book guides readers through the evolving traditions behind the story — from classical myth and Italian novellas to English moral, civic, and theatrical discourses. Each chapter narrows the focus, examining narrative structures, character formation, dramatic action, spatial settings, symbolic objects, and the metaphors through which passion and fate become intelligible. Rather than presenting Shakespeare’s play as the product of a single source, the study uncovers a dynamic process of adaptation and reinvention across centuries of storytelling. The result is a fresh understanding of how inherited narratives, cultural anxieties, and poetic invention converge to produce the tragedy’s unique tension between desire and catastrophe. A compelling contribution for scholars and readers alike, this book invites us to see Romeo and Juliet not as an isolated masterpiece, but as the culmination of a long and complex tradition of tragic love.

Silvia Bigliazzi is Professor of English Literature and the Director of the Skenè Research Centre at Verona University. She is the co-general Director of Skenè. JTDS and of the series Shakespeare Inverted (Bloomsbury), Anglica and Cross Borders (ETS), She is the PI of the SENS project.