Conflicting Perspectives, Julius Caesar + 2 Related

Conflicting Perspectives, Julius Caesar + 2 Related

By selecting language forms, features and structures, composers can display two seemingly opposing viewpoints. However, through representation codes, one opinion is diminished to emphasise the composer’s contextual perspective. This is clearly shown in William Shakespeare’s tragic play Julius Caesar (1599), Robert Browning’s poem Lost Leader (1845), and Michael Moore’s documentaryCapitalism a Love Story (2009). While the Elizabethan political climate foregrounded Shakespeare’s conflicting perspectives on Caesar’s assassination in relation to political leadership and governmental systems, Browning and Moore also formulated political viewpoints that reflect their political circumstances.
+ Through analysis of how authors have responded to conflicting perspectives in order to elevate their own, we are able to see how representation of texts is determined by anticipated responses.
In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare displays contradictory viewpoints on Caesar’s personalities, but the view that Caesar is a tyrant is diminished to heighten the veracity of Caesar as an ideal man of leadership, ensuring its relevance among the Elizabethan audience. Shakespeare exhibits the justification of Caesar’s assassination in a dramatic soliloquy, “[Caesar] as a serpent’s egg | Which, hatched, would as his kind grows mischievous,” the biblical symbol compares Caesar to a contextually relevant satanic creature to a religious audience, underlining his potential abuse of power. In the forum scene, Brutus extols the virtues of Caesar’s demise, “Had you rather Caesar were living and die all slaves, then that Caesar were dead, to live all freemen?” The antithetical erotesis highlights how the assassination was to prevent the loss of freedom in Rome. However, in support of the Queen, Shakespeare undermines Brutus’ opinion who speaks in prose, representing an opinion from the lower class of the Elizabethan society; contrasting with Antony’s poetic verse that is used by nobles. The logical...

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