Aloïs Wood is a second year English Literature student. They recently participated in the YSJ Big Summer Read 2025 which focussed on Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi. Clarke was awarded an honorary degree by York St John University in 2024. Described by Adam J Smith as “the tale of the titular Piranesi, who wakes trapped in an unending labyrinth of statues, skeletons and an ocean,” Aloïs concentrates on the novel’s setting and allusions in their review.
This summer, we were all invited to read and discuss Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. It is a thought-provoking journey into a bricolage of abstract concepts within the physical space of “the House” – where Clarke creates a world of ancient statues and columns, a great sea, and only two living inhabitants aside from the flora and fauna. The setting and protagonist of Piranesi is original and focused, with Piranesi himself being such a docile and curious character it is hard not to follow him with affection. As a literature student at YSJ, I found this novel interesting as a work influenced both by C.S. Lewis (the House being modelled on Charn) and Plato’s allegory of the cave. However, I was pulled along chiefly by its exploration of the non-material, or spiritual aspects of human beings, and how this innate core to us interacts with the cognitive construct of language and literature.
The House represents the ancient landscape of the soul, for it does not communicate verbally, but through our innate senses: in visual art of statues and columns; a soundscape of sea and bird calls. However, this novel still welcomes in the reader by integrating literature, for Piranesi must cling to his diary, recording his interpretations of the House throughout the whole of his journey. Piranesi records that “the Ancient Knowledge has encouraged us to think of the House as if it were a sort of riddle to be unravelled, a text to be interpreted […] It is enough in and of Itself” (60). This novel explores what it means to exist and how, especially in a world filled with those who search for meaning everywhere, we might value a stoic acceptance of our environment as it comes. Clarke puts this sentiment so stunningly simply, it feels intrusive to try and overcomplicate this with explanation!
Piranesi is a fantastical novel which demonstrates how living in the world and to study it are both integral aspects of the human experience, for we are in possession of hearts as well as minds. The way we may experience Clarke’s novel is the same, enjoying it as a thrilling story, but also as a didactic manual.
Cameron Stewart started working at the Amnesty International Bookshop in York in October 2023, ahead of the Literature at Work module in the following Spring. “I didn’t know much about the organisation then, but have enjoyed my time volunteering and learning more about what they do. I’m proud to still volunteer once a week and have made great friends on the team. They like to have academic discussions on human rights and latest news.” Here is his message to you:
Thank you! Thank you to all the students and staff at York St John who visit, purchase from, and support the Amnesty Bookshop on Micklegate in York. Thank you to all the students and staff who signed our paper and online petitions. You might know that in early June, the bookshop was told it was at risk of closure. This led to a hard-fought campaign by both the shop volunteers, of which I am incredibly proud to be part of, and the wider York community. The shop has now got a reprieve while the organisation reviews all the arguments.
The next big update on the bookshop will be in February 2026. This gives us five months to work together as a community to secure its future. York has a highly respected status as a city of human rights defenders. YSJ is a University of Sanctuary. I greatly admire the way both Amnesty and YSJ value inclusion, tolerance, human rights for all, and the pursuit of a fairer and kinder society and world. The students play a leading role in the work that YSJ does and the example it sets. The motto of the English Department is “Words Matter” and they really do. Words are tools that can construct a better world and counteract those who seek to sow division.
I am happy to tell you that from the 20th to the 28th September, the Amnesty bookshop will be offering 20% student discount, to all students. The usual student discount is 10%. We appreciate you and hope you will visit, share about the shop and find a good book to either use for your studies or for leisure. The shop is a very warm, welcoming place with a team who love to chat and share recommendations about the books they are enjoying. Also, if you follow The Amnesty Bookshop York Facebook page and booksforamnestyyork on Instagram, you will see the latest news.
We look forward to welcoming you back or seeing you for the first time.
Image via Amnesty Bookshop York. Used with permission.
Review of Learlike premiere by Greensleeved: York International Shakespeare Festival
Brooke Rooney is a third year student. She reviewed LearLike for her Shakespeare: Perspectives assignment, a portfolio of blog posts. As the winner of the annual international ShakeSphere competion, LearLike premiered at York St John in May 2025 as part of the York International Shakespeare Festival before touring through Europe’s summer Shakespeare festivals in Verona, Ostrava, Gdansk and Craiova.
King Lear’s Shadow casts deep over Learlike by Greensleeved.Focalising his daughters, the play which bears his name keeps his hollow space at its centre, as a puppet-prop given lines by distorted voice-over.
Lear’s Hollow Presence
(Figure 1. Lear Behind His Daughters)
It even took me a full minute to realise that what I was seeing was in fact King Lear — so off-put was I by the strange appearance. Portrayed as a being of animated grey cloth on sticks, the effect is inhuman and disturbing: a figure whom you recognise as unreal, and yet you cannot bear to look away from the swishing of his draped limbs. He is both an empty prop, kept up by his daughters, and a presence that cannot be ignored.
Born of the minimal-prop criteria of the ESFN ShakeSphere competition (four members, and all their stage props carriable in two suitcases), this Lear is utilised not as the lead or heart of the play, but rather as an absence at its centre. A father who is not really there. Not a King, but the King’s shadow. We feel his simultaneous presence and un-presence in his inhuman visage.
Visual Representation and Semiotics
The dynamic of Lear’s strain on his family is enhanced in his visual representation: his extreme age, his intemperate self, his strangeness capturing his depiction at the “tragic intersection of being and non-being” (McFarland, p. 99). We can develop our understanding of this choice with this idea: by existing at this crossroads of not-quite-being, he unnerves. He is himself and yet an imposter. We see him hanging at the fringes of life as his daughters do — not the aged man that he is, but the inhuman caricature of age itself: loose, ragged, and flapping, held up by the young. He is less of a person and more an effect in and of himself.
Semiotically, we can say that all that we associate with the concept of “King Lear” — the bundle of information we recall about the character when we see it signified — is reinterpreted by the way the symbol of Lear is depicted. Lear is cloth. Lear is a man. Lear is a distant voice. Lear cannot speak. How does all this new visual and textual presentation of a familiar character recontextualise our interpretation of what they signify?
In the case of Learlike, our Lear becomes very much that: a Lear-like, a hollow parody of himself, the very epitome of age-demented “madness” and irregularity. He is no longer himself as we remember him from other productions of King Lear, and yet the play asserts indeed it must be him. We are therefore forced to reconcile this idea — this Not-Quite-Lear as Lear. He is gouged, emptied out, and yet here fills the space of Lear entirely. He is not Lear, but Lear as experienced by his daughters: a demented, ragged, empty rage, a far-off father. This is another deliberate tool of the focalisation at work in Learlike. We share in the strangeness of the abuses of Lear’s age as his daughters do.
The Daughters’ Focalisation
Of course, this visual metaphor is extended when his cloth body is torn apart and adorned over the bodies of his daughters as symbols of office/royal prestige. Goneril, who acquires more of his body than any other, becomes very much like Lear — quick to judge, capricious, spiteful, and anxious. This is, to me, a depiction of her inheriting familial issues, be they traumas or personality traits. She acts with his suspicion, his heavy-handedness. She is who the others in the play call “Learlike.” The director herself stated that the daughters’ story is about “their father’s legacy of abuse” (Thoden van Velzen, 2025), demonstrating that this was very much part of the process of designing this visual effect.
Visual Metaphor and Symbolism
The focalisation of the daughters is ultimately defined by the dehumanisation of King Lear. The division of characters — the human cast against an inhuman prop — sets up the conflict very quickly. The editing of the outcome of Cordelia serves this end too: she remains with the sickly cloth Lear throughout his descent into madness, and we see her reunite with her sisters in the ending. In this play, the sisters do not die. Lear dies, but the sisters remain, to linger instead in the wake of the tragedy, rather than be its fodder.
The Story of Family
This is the fateful change of focalisation — we are left with new questions, threads undone at the play’s end. Goneril is captured, and Regan and Cordelia are left behind. Cordelia is alive, but we are left with questions as to how this new version of the ending plays out.
The story of family goes on, and that is the tragedy. There lingers still resentment, familial wounds, and King Lear’s cloth, awaiting the next Learlike to take it up…
By Aloïs Wood (they/them), Year 1, English Literature BA
Come along to see the York St John Shakespeare Society presents a set of pop-up scenes from Much Ado About Nothing in the Creative Centre on the YSJ campus on 3rd May! This performance will take place throughout the day at the ESRA Symposium on Shakespeare and Our Histories, punctuating talks by keynote speaker Darren Freebury Jones, of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and a range of panellists who will be discussing the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Drop by for brassy, touching and comedic acts! You are even invited to bring a packed lunch and stay for the wedding of Hero and Claudio… What could possibly go wrong?!
This article is coming to you from a member of the student production team, with a full guarantee of our passion and dedication to project. The Shakespeare Society here at YSJ is only in its founding year – and the Much Ado production has been in development since last October. This has been the society’s first time working together as a team of actors and creative management, and we’ve managed to always come out of rehearsal sessions feeling very accomplished!
Our superb actors, and the society as a whole, has handled Shakespeare with high creative zeal. Much Ado has been reframed into an early 2000s ‘battle of the bands’ movie set, a la Pitch Perfect or Scott Pilgrim Versus the World. Beatrice and Benedick play members of rival bands, with the cast playing managers, fans, and roadies. Each character belongs uniquely to their actor, with much innovation abundant in their choice of stage acting when not speaking. Meanwhile, the work in direction and management have implemented ideas to have scenes work together and organise scripts and structuring. We have taken full liberty of the original work in abridging the script and playing with our interpretations in costumes, props, and staging. Dogberry and Verges will, of course, be providing security at the event.
In between these pop-up scenes, panellists will speak briefly on the ways Shakespeare intersects with our histories, personal and collective, with topics ranging from the early modern Dutch playwright Vondel, to translating sonnet 18 into the Azary language, to how the bard travelled to China. Most excitingly, in a double-bill panel on Much Ado About Nothing, yours truly shall take to the stage to discuss with more reflection and technicality the society’s approach and experience in working with older texts in the modern day (3.45 – 4.15 pm!). I am honoured to be sitting alongside Julie Raby, retired principal lecturer at YSJ, whose research focusses on Shakespeare in contemporary performance.
Come by and see us, to see how student produce and enjoy Shakespeare at York St. John! No payment required but please do book your slot here.
Check out the York International Shakespeare Festival programme here. There are many concessionary tickets available at YSJ, plus free events, and Theatre@41 have a student rush concession scheme for any unsold tickets just before their performances begin.
By Becca Green, 2nd Year English Literature and Creative Writing Student
At være eller ikke at være / Être, ou ne pas être / Ser, o no ser / að vera eða ekki vera / Ser ou não ser / 生存还是毁灭 / Sein oder Nichtsein / Essere o non essere / быть или не быть
York International Shakespeare Festival is coming back this year for its 10 year anniversary! The festival runs from the 22nd of April until the 4th of May and the line-up has events for all beloved Shakespeare fans, and even ones for those who are only just discovering his legendary work. This year there is a brand new feature event that aims to celebrate the love of Shakespeare on a global scale! Taking place on a day set just for all things Hamlet, the ‘To be or not to be’ event will showcase readings of the tragic hero’s monologue from one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays in multiple different languages. It is a chance to celebrate culture, community and creativity!
The inspiration for this event was born in the birthplace of Shakespeare himself. On a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, students from York St John University immersed themselves in their own global exploration of the text. It was a chance to celebrate international students and get involved with their Shakespeare studies in a brand new, immersive way.
YSJ PhD student Mie Claridge discusses her experience on the trip which inspired the upcoming festival event:
“It was a chilly but sunny day in March and after taking in the exhibition and seeing the house that Shakespeare was born in, we all gathered in the courtyard. There is a small podium where the museum sometimes stages readings, so Saffron suggested that we read and perform some scenes from plays studied on the module. I am very much not a performer, so although I wanted to get involved, I wasn’t sure how. Saffron urged me to read a section of Hamlet because my native language is Danish, so I googled the ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy and took to the podium to do a dramatic reading. Reading it in my native language was much less daunting than reading it in English because no one would know if I missed a word out! Others joined in with translations of ‘to be or not to be’ in their native languages and there were versions in Polish, Spanish, Japanese, and German. It was really cool to hear the same section read out in different languages because, although you can’t understand the words, the rhythm and intonation consistent across all translations makes it easily recognisable.”
‘Death by Hamlet’ takes place on the 29th of April on which the ‘To be or not to be’ event will take place. The festival is currently recruiting budding performers and Shakespeare enthusiasts to get involved with this sensational event. If you are an international student, someone who has a native language other than English, or perhaps is interested in preforming Shakespeare in urban slang or sign language, then please do get involved!
Expressions of interest can be sent to mieclaridge@gmail.com and we look forward to hearing your unique rendition of the soliloquy and celebrating Shakespeare on a global scale with everyone at the festival!
Click here for YISF information and booking links.
