To change or not to change, that is the question that Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, assistant professor of English, answers in an article published recently on The New Yorker website.
The piece, “Why We (Mostly) Stopped Messing With Shakespeare’s Language,” focuses on the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s new project to translate all Shakespeare’s plays into modern English. He also published “Fresh Shakespeare from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival” on Oregon Arts Watch.
Pollack-Pelzner, who is the scholar-in-residence for the Portland Shakespeare Project, teaches Shakespeare, Renaissance drama and British literary history at Linfield. His research focuses on Shakespeare adaptations, how writers have transformed Shakespeare’s plots, characters and style into literary forms that speak to their own cultural moment. He is completing a book on Shakespeare and the Victorian novel, has published numerous articles on Shakespeare and other English literary figures, and he assisted in editing the second edition of the Norton Shakespeare. He has appeared on Oregon Public Broadcasting and given public presentations at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
Pollack-Pelzner received his doctorate from Harvard University, and taught previously at Harvard and the American School of Paris. He trained at Yale University as a Shakespearean actor.
Learn about the Linfield Department of English.
