Matthew Marlingford Williamson

• Williamson, Matt (2025). History and/as Genre in the Work of Fritz Lang and Ernst Lubitsch. In Boyd, David John (Eds.), ReFocus: The Historical Films of Ernst Lubitsch. Edinburgh University Press. ISSN 9781399532617. doi: https:/www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/jj.25700568.19. Full text in Research Archive
• Williamson, Matt (2025). Shakespeare, Radical Humanism, and Tudor Reform Movements. In Fitter, Chris (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Politics. Routledge. ISSN 9781032534596. p. 154–166. doi: 10.4324/9781003412113-14. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This chapter explores the radical dimension to early modern humanist thought. It focuses, in particular, on the work of Thomas More, Thomas Starkey and the Commonwealth Men of the 1540s. The chapter highlights, above all, the significance of these ideas for the work of Shakespeare, considering both the impassioned critiques which these figures levelled at their society and the daring solutions which they advocated for the problems which they saw. But it also situates this work in the broader material context in which it was produced, foregrounding the changing socioeconomic basis of England and the centralising tendencies of the English state. First, the chapter analyses the complex ways in which radical humanists, and Shakespeare himself, responded to agrarian change. Here, it is possible to identify strategies of agrarian complaint, which express an overt anxiety regarding the capitalisation of agriculture, while also establishing radical new conceptions of the interrelation of morality and material circumstances. Second, the chapter considers the role of the state. The humanists display fascination with the power wielded by the centralising Tudor monarchies, but are also defined by a marked anxiety at the prospect of monarchical overreach, providing repeated indictments of tyranny and even questioning the institution of monarchy as a whole. These ideas find their counterpart in the recurrent elements of anti-monarchical critique which can be discerned in Shakespeare’s work. Throughout, the chapter aims to demonstrate the profound importance of radical humanism and the Tudor reform movements for an understanding of the work of Shakespeare. It seeks to demonstrate the multiplicity of political thought in the early modern period, revealing the capacity of Shakespeare’s work to assert not simply orthodoxy or carnivalesque subversion but rather explicit projects for the reordering and restructuring of society.

• Williamson, Matt (2024). Staging the Dutch Revolt: Gender, Commerce and Republicanism. Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies (JEMCS). ISSN 1531-0485. 22(3), p. 44–68. Full text in Research Archive
• Williamson, Matt (2024). Nice day to go fishing: Ludic and narratological repetition in Epic NPC Man. Science Fiction Film and Television. ISSN 1754-3770. 17(3), p. 357–374. doi: 10.3828/sfftv.2024.20. Full text in Research Archive
• Williamson, Matt (2024). ‘Who is More Scorn’d than a Poor Scholar Is?’: Academic Precarity and the Early Modern Theatre. English. ISSN 0013-8215. 73(282), p. 178–180. doi: 10.1093/english/efae027. Full text in Research Archive
• Williamson, Matt (2021). "Bread with Danger Purchased": Hunger, Plenty and the Outlaw on the Early Modern Stage. In Elmes, Melissa Ridley & Bovaird-Abbo, Kristin (Ed.), Food and Feast in Premodern Outlaw Tales. Routledge. ISSN 9780367751098. Full text in Research Archive
• Williamson, Matt (2019). Imperial Appetites: Cannibalism and the Early Modern Theatre. In Herrmann, Rachel (Eds.), To Feast on Us as Their Prey: Cannibalism and the early modern Atlantic. The University of Arkansas Press. ISSN 9781682260814. p. 115–134. Full text in Research Archive
• Williamson, Matt (2019). “Strange Flesh”: Hunger and Appetite in Shakespeare’s Rome. Shakespeare. ISSN 1745-0918. 15(4), p. 316–325. doi: 10.1080/17450918.2019.1649302. Full text in Research Archive
• Williamson, Matthew (2018). “Cry Clubs for Prentices”: (Not) Performing Riot in Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday. Shakespeare. ISSN 1745-0918. 14(3), p. 216–225. doi: 10.1080/17450918.2018.1504813. Full text in Research Archive

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• Williamson, Matt (2021). Hunger, Appetite and the Politics of the Renaissance Stage. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108832069. 237 p. Full text in Research Archive

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• Williamson, Matt (2024). Review: Disseminating Shakespeare in the Nordic Countries: Shifting Centres and Peripheries in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Nely Keinänen and Per Sivefors; Reconstructing Shakespeare in the Nordic Countries: National Revival and Interwar Politics, 1870–1940, edited by Nely Keinänen and Per Sivefors. Translation and Literature. ISSN 0968-1361. Full text in Research Archive
• Williamson, Matthew (2023). Staging the Discharged Soldier. Full text in Research Archive
• Williamson, Matthew (2023). Staging Counsel on the Early Modern Stage. Full text in Research Archive
• Vida, Lena & Williamson, Matt (2018). Goal-oriented and Motivation Driven Narratives in The Hunger Games. Universitetet i Oslo. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This thesis discusses The Hunger Games trilogy and film series as gynocentric, motivation driven narratives. For that purpose, the motivation driven narrative is defined and introduced as an opposing end to the androcentric and consequentialist, goal-oriented narrative predominant in Western culture. While the canonic story, the most prevalent goal-oriented narrative in Western culture, tends to feature a male protagonist with an initially determined goal, and it prefers to conclude the narrative in a happy ending focusing on heterosexual romance, the Hunger Games texts presents what is determined as the motivation driven narrative; a female protagonist that is most dominantly urged by her motivation of care instead of relying on a definite goal that would resolve at the end of the narrative. Additionally, the ending of the motivation driven narrative, as well as, of the Hunger Games texts, seem to move away from the preferred ending of the canonic story. Instead of focusing on the unification of the female and male heroes, the ending of the trilogy is discussed to demonstrate Katniss’s conscious motivation driven choice of helping Peeta become a new person that will additionally allow them to grow together. In case of the film adaptation, an ending transgressing from the idea of the unification of the couple is similarly observable, with shifting the focus from a romantic union between Katniss and Peeta to a union between Katniss and children. Through scrutinizing the smaller narratives and the meta-narratives appearing in the Hunger Games texts, this thesis aims to determine the orientation of the texts to be dominantly deontologist and motivation driven. The significance of proving such popular texts to be motivation driven lies also in the gendered aspect of the Hunger Games texts featuring Katniss Everdeen, a female protagonist, which aids the designation of the narratives to be gynocentric motivation driven texts. The Hunger Games trilogy and film series, therefore, can be considered as inspirational works illustrating the dawn of a time positively welcoming gynocentric motivation driven narratives.

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