Duckert Dissertation
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Waterscapes of Desire: Composing with the Elements in Early Modern Drama and Travel Writing by Lowell Nelson Duckert B.A. in English, June 2004, Western Washington University M.A. in English, May 2007, Arizona State University A Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 31, 2012 Dissertation directed by Jonathan Gil Harris Professor of English The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of the George Washington University certifies that Lowell Nelson Duckert has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of May 30, 2012. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. Waterscapes of Desire: Composing with the Elements in Early Modern Drama and Travel Writing Lowell Nelson Duckert Dissertation Research Committee: Jonathan Gil Harris, Professor of English, Dissertation Director Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Professor of English, Committee Member Holly Dugan, Assistant Professor of English, Committee Member ii © Copyright 2012 by Lowell Nelson Duckert All rights reserved iii Dedication For my family, turbulent and tranquil. iv Acknowledgments Since this is a project that deals with desire, let me say that I have had the most desirable committee ever assembled: my director, Jonathan Gil Harris, who introduced me to watery Ralegh in my first graduate seminar at GW, who helped me find my element, and who never failed to give brilliant feedback even while he weathered the monsoons of India—adbhut shukriya ada karta hoon; Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, whose generosity of heart and mind kept both me and my work flowing, and who believed in me through the most turgid times; and Holly Dugan, who asked the tough questions I was afraid to answer, who opened up new routes for me to travel. My internal examiner, Jonathan Hsy, contributed more than a designated reader should; I thank him for reminding me how fluid language really is, that translation should never be taken for granted. I must also thank Steve Mentz, my outside examiner and a true blue scholar, for making waves for me to follow. There are several others whose work has significantly shaped my own: Stacy Alaimo, Alfred K. Siewers, and Julian Yates. I have been fortunate enough to meet thinkers like these through the George Washington Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute (GW MEMSI), a center I have had the honor to work for, present my work to, and whose mission is an inspiration to all disciplines. Long may it run. Special thanks to the BABEL Working Group for its intoxicating intellectualism – I am in your debt, Eileen Joy and Myra Seaman, and I will see you soon. No ecological project would be complete without acknowledging the places that made my writing possible: Assateague National Seashore, Old Rag Mountain, and Acadia National Park, to name a few. Landscapes run through every word that follows. Lastly, I want to thank my immediate friends and family who have accompanied me on all kinds of adventures, both the ups v and the downs. Elisabeth, Christina, Collette, Jude, and Loralei: you say that I take you places, but the feeling is mutual; you have given me the hope for the futures I imagine herein. Thank you for proving to me that recreation can re-create, and, most importantly, that creation truly is an act of love. vi Abstract of Dissertation Waterscapes of Desire: Composing with the Elements in Early Modern Drama and Travel Writing My dissertation argues that waterscapes of the early modern period – rivers, glaciers, monsoons, and swamps – form fluid networks in which the human and nonhuman mix. Early modern writers demonstrate how the human body is intermeshed with the liquid environment. Examining works by Walter Ralegh, William Shakespeare, François Bernier, and others, I attend to what water, in its diverse forms, does: streams drift, ice slips, rain precipitates, and mud bogs. The author flows with wet things and attains new material embodiments. Water suffuses the compositional process as a result. In their encounters with water in global contact zones, early modern travel writers composed waterscapes differently from those who stayed at home. Ralegh’s experience with Guianan waterfalls that “drew me on” introduces a genre of literature unlike poetry devoted to the Thames. Contemporary drama tests the remarkable agency of water that travelers describe: when the first scene of Shakespeare’s The Tempest calls for “wet” mariners to appear, for example, their entrance signals an oceanic ecology in which the human and the nonhuman are co-implicated. Watery bodies materialize in the playhouse. The significance of this project is twofold: in extending the work done by early modern ecocritics such as Steve Mentz and Robert Watson, I focus on waterscapes as sites of constant creativity; and I analyze the imperial and often violent histories behind waterscapes, especially when divisions between the human and the ecological are imposed. Early modern authors questioned such divides. Drama and travel writing of the vii period – Ralegh’s Discoverie of Guiana, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, and more – helps us imagine ethical ways to reconceive the relationships between humans and nonhumans in our own geopolitical time. viii Table of Contents Dedication...........................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgements.........................................................................................................v-vi Abstract of Dissertation..............................................................................................vii-viii List of Figures.....................................................................................................................x Introduction: Enter, Wet......................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Water Ralegh....................................................................................................32 Chapter 2: Going Glacial.................................................................................................101 Chapter 3: When It Rains.................................................................................................157 Chapter 4: Swamp Things................................................................................................196 Conclusion: Exit, Wet......................................................................................................272 Bibliography....................................................................................................................276 ix List of Figures Figure 1..............................................................................................................................35 Figure 2..............................................................................................................................39 Figure 3............................................................................................................................108 Figure 4............................................................................................................................133 Figure 5............................................................................................................................133 Figure 6............................................................................................................................134 Figure 7............................................................................................................................147 Figure 8............................................................................................................................192 Figure 9............................................................................................................................263 x Enter, Wet Instead of clarifying even further the relations between objectivity and subjectivity, time enmeshes, at an even greater level of intimacy and on an ever greater scale, humans and nonhumans with each other ... [T]he confusion of humans and nonhumans is not only our past but our future as well. Bruno Latour, Pandora’s Hope Feste: I am for all waters. Twelfth Night, 4.2.56 This is a story about water—and the stories water tells. What follows is an exercise in collaboration, an experiment in sensing wet worlds and words together in flow. Laboratory 1: Life? In a Japanese wet lab in the late twentieth century, Dr. Masaru Emoto discovers the concept of hado: “the intrinsic vibrational pattern at the atomic level in all matter, the smallest unit of energy. Its basis is the energy of human consciousness” (Hado 2006). When water is shown a picture of dolphins, hears the word “peace,” or listens to Frédéric Chopin’s Prelude No. 15 (“Raindrop”), its crystallized patterns are beautiful. But when water hears the word “war” or heavy metal, it turns ugly. Antarctic water is aesthetically pleasing, while water from Hiroshima City is a blur. Eureka: human consciousness affects reality. “We literally shape and have control over our world, our bodies, emotional well-being, and everything we come in contact with—through our thoughts, feelings and words” (2006). In 1999 he publishes his findings as The Hidden Messages in Water. This is no laboratory life for water, however, stuck in its Petri dishes of passivity. Water simply mirrors human emotions; once