DOCSLIB.ORG

University of California

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
University of California UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Playing With Lives: Theatricality, Self-Staging, and the Problem of Agency in Renaissance English Revenge Tragedy Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5tn4k6vq Author Condon, James Joseph Publication Date 2009 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Playing With Lives: Theatricality, Self-Staging, and the Problem of Agency in Renaissance English Revenge Tragedy A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by James Joseph Condon December 2009 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Deborah Willis, Chairperson Dr. John Ganim Dr. Stanley Stewart Copyright by James Joseph Condon 2009 The Dissertation of James Joseph Condon is approved: ____________________________________________ ____________________________________________ ____________________________________________ Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the patient and insightful guidance I enjoyed during my graduate studies at UC Riverside. I would very much like to thank professors John Briggs, Andrea Denny-Brown, John Ganim, and Stanley Stewart for their encouragement and active involvement in my development as a scholar of medieval and early modern literature. In particular, though, I would like to thank professor Deborah Willis, my dissertation committee chair, whose generosity, critical engagement, and tireless support have remained a constant source of inspiration and reassurance. Any success I enjoy is due in no small part to them. I am also eternally grateful to my friends, family, and peers, who have suffered patiently through my neglect as I worked on this project. Without their much needed perspective and unflagging affection, I would not have been able to emerge from this process unscathed. Relatively unscathed, at least. iv For my mother, who first set me on this path and will want to read this. For my father, who passed away before he got the chance. And for Kelly. Always. v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Playing With Lives: Theatricality, Self-staging, and the Problem of Agency in Renaissance English Revenge Tragedy by James Joseph Condon Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in English University of California, Riverside, December 2009 Dr. Deborah Willis, Chairperson This project explores Renaissance revenge tragedy’s conspicuous theatricality in light of the genre’s primary concerns of personal transformation and the place of the self within an increasingly prescriptive society and cosmology. Specifically, its goal is to assert the essential dramaturgical role of theatricality in the early modern revenge play. Focusing primarily on the Kydian tradition of revenge begun with The Spanish Tragedy and continued in the work of William Shakespeare, John Marston, and Thomas Middleton, this study investigates the genre’s treatment of subjectivity and how the characters’ attempts at self-fashioning are mitigated—and at times, utterly thwarted—by the preexisting interpretive systems within which these characters move. This project vi argues that the revenger’s turn to theatricality affords him a means of destabilizing those associations by interfering with the court’s ability to identify, interpret, and classify effectively. In so doing, the revenger facilitates a transformation of self that will combat his original state of impotence and vulnerability, and ultimately, creates a fleeting opportunity in which he might appropriate those tools of political domination that had previously victimized him. The liberatory potential of such theatricalized agency is compromised, however, by its conspicuous exclusion of female subjects, who are either appropriated as spectacles to motivate masculine reprisal, or cast as monstrous agents whose grasp at revenge effectively robs them of their femininity. More generally, Playing With Lives explores how the genre’s theatricality undermines essentialist notions of subjectivity, and through its metadramatic conventions, essentially stages spectatorship to foreground issues of signification and voyeuristic reception to speak to the broader issues of how the individual semiotically constructs meaning and how those interpretations are situated within a political framework. vii Table of Contents Introduction: Setting the Stage for Revenge……………………….…………………………………….1 Chapter 1: Exile, Imprisonment, and Courtly Entertainments: The Tyranny of Spatial Control…....23 Chapter 2: Revenge as Rite of Passage: Liminal Theatricality and the Elision of Difference…..…..52 Chapter 3: Pretty as a Picture: Women, Spectacle, and Misogynist Theatricality…………………..99 Chapter 4: “But Words Will Never Hurt Me”: Rhetorical Violence and the Sovereign Tongue..…143 Conclusion: Jacobean Drama and the Demise of the Kydian Revenge Play……………………..….178 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………..………..193 viii Introduction: Setting the Stage for Revenge Francis Bacon’s famous description of revenge as “a kinde of Wilde Justice” suggests the ambivalence surrounding the very idea of personal retribution. The appeal of lex talionis, of taking eye for eye in response to an injury done to us or ours, is not only viscerally satisfying, but helps to combat those feelings of impotence that assault any victim; blood revenge lets us actively do something about our plight, and in that recovery of agency lies much of the prospect’s allure. At the same time, however, the consequences of such retaliation stretch beyond those individuals involved, for as Bacon reminds, “the Revenge of that wrong, putteth the Law out of Office.”1 Taking matters into one’s own hands as revenge requires directly challenges the state’s privilege of being sole arbiter and executor of its laws, thereby inevitably contextualizing even the most personal of conflicts amidst a broader political framework and putting the revenger at risk for reprisal from the state itself. As a result, any study of revenge becomes not only an exploration of those conflicting impulses within the individual that simultaneously demand and eschew vengeance but also an investigation of the tension that exists between the subject and his or her place within the larger socio-political setting. Even a cursory glance at those conventions most typical of early modern revenge tragedy similarly suggests that the genre’s interests surpass the plight of its protagonists alone, despite how much their personas might dominate their plays. While such staples as the madness and delay speak to the turmoil within the revenger’s mind, his consistently inferior social position to those who wrong him and the conspicuous misogyny within the genre itself both point to a broader concern with difference and the abuses that are routinely carried out through such social and gender systems that inherently hierarchize 1 their members based on that alterity. This theme is underscored by the very nature of revenge, one predicated upon a clear distinction between them and us, enemy and friend, which inherently leads to violence based upon that difference. My project is to explore this twofold focus of early modern revenge tragedy, namely the conflicted subjectivity of its avenging protagonist and those systems of categorization and difference through which these subjects move and against which, ultimately, they must contend if they wish to see their vengeance done. At the heart of the English revenge play lies the contemplation of individual agency’s place within social and theological strictures that appropriate the citizen’s nascent agency and reallocate it to the state or God. Specifically, the revenge tragedy asks as what point—if at all—can man ignore the dictates of state and church and instead follow the demands of personal desire. These plays foreground a very specific tension between the individual’s compulsion to see revenge done and an utter inability to satisfy this desire through any legitimate means. The revenger is blocked at every turn by an opponent more powerful and, at least at first, more cunning that he, and thus the avenger ultimately comes face to face with a stark realization that his current state is one fundamentally characterized by impotence and a vulnerability to both the hegemony at large and the specific individuals who preside over it. If his pursuit of revenge is to remain paramount, then, some other aspect of self must therefore change to compensate. The seemingly inevitable result of this existential dilemma, at least for the early modern revenger, is a gradual transformation from victim to victimizer; as John Kerrigan notes in Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon, the inherent irony of the revenge play is that the revenger must ultimately become a murderer himself to see his quest fulfilled, 2 and in so doing, make his opponent into a victim, just as he himself once was.2 In other words, at the heart of every revenge play is a deliberate transformation of self. This concern with individual self-fashioning begins to explain the true presence of another generic convention besides those delays, bouts of madness, or social inequalities already discussed—its conspicuous and oft-noted theatricality. The powerlessness of the protagonist’s original situation prompts him to seek alternate means of controlling events, and thus the revenger often becomes increasingly theatrical throughout the course of the play,
Load more

Recommended publications
  • ROMANTIC CRITICISM of SHAKESPEARIAN DRAMA By
    ROMANTIC CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARIAN DRAMA By JOHN g,RAWFORD Associate of Arts Texarkana College Texarkana, Texas 1956 Bachelor of Science in Education Ouachita Baptist University Arkadelphia, Arkansas 1959 Master of Science in Education Drake University Des Moines, Iowa 1962 Submitted to the faculty of .the Graduate College of the Oklahoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF EDUCATION May, 1968 OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OCT 24 1968 ROMANTIC CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARIAN DRAMA Thesis Approved: Thesis Adviser \ f ,A .. < \ Dean of the Graduate College ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I should like to· thank anumber·of people who helped me in many different ways during· the·preparation· of .this dissertation, notably Dr. David· S. Berkeley,·major adviser, who-lent words of encouragement, guidance, understanding, and patience; but also my committee members, Dr. Darrel Ray·, Pr~ Judson Milburn, and· .Dr~- Loyd Douglas; and. the Oklahoma State University library staff, especially Miss Helen Donart and Mrs • .:fosephine Monk. iii TABLE-OF CONTENTS Chap tel' Page. I. INTRODUCTION •••• 1 II. HAMLET .••• . ' . .. ... 29 III. ANTONY -~ CLEOPATRA • • • • . • • . • • • It • . • • . • .• • a1 ·IV. HENRYV· . ,. ". .• . 122 V. THE· MERCHANT ·QE. VENICE .- . "' . 153 VI. CONCLUSION • • ' . -. ,. 187 BIBLIOGRAPHY • • • • · • . .. 191 iv CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Of all the so-called schools of Shakespearian criticism, the Romantic has been and continues to be one of the most influential. Per- haps this is true merely because of the impor~ance which the Romantic School places upon the genius of the subj~ct, for all schools of criti- cism recognize Shakespeare's ability at creating effective drama. A more accurate answer, however, probably lies in the fact that "romanti- cism" has a broad base and encompasses so very much.
    [Show full text]
  • Revenge Tragedy and Identity
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-theses Repository REVENGE TRAGEDY AND IDENTITY NURUL FARHANA LOW BT. ABDULLAH (293498) A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts of The University of Birmingham for the degree of Master of Philosophy (B) Contemporary Critical Theory Department of English Faculty of Arts The University of Birmingham September 1999 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This thesis attempts a reading of Revenge Tragedy using concepts found in Psychoanalytic theory to explore the idea of identity formation. Revenge tragedy was a popular form of drama in the Jacobean period, although the first revenge play, The Spanish Tragedy was written before the end of the sixteenth century. Revenge tragedies feature an individual who takes private action for a crime committed against a loved one, usually because he/she is denied legitimate justice. This type of drama is said to reflect the anxieties of its age, one of which is the question of identity.
    [Show full text]
  • The Development of the Chlorinity-Salinity Concept in Oceanography
    AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF WILLIAM JOHN WALLACE, JR. for the Ph. D. (Name) (Degree) in GENERAL SCIENCE presented on April 7,1971 (Major) (Date) Title: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHLORINITY-SALINITY CONCEPT INOCEANOGRAM Redacted for Privacy Abstract approved: Vert J. Moris This study traces the historical foundations of the concept of constant ionic proportionality and the equation (Salinity[S°700] = 1.805 Chlorinity [C1700] + 0.030) which has been in general use in ocean- ography since 1902 until 1969 and which is based upon this constancy, The notion that the constituents present in sea water exist in constant proportions was first clearly stated by Marcet in 1819.The germ of the idea may be found, however, in the worksof Bergmann in the late eighteenth century and implied in other works.Maury, in the mid-nineteenth century, popularized the concept and Forchhammer, in 1865, strengthened this idea by quantifying it and introducing the use of the "coefficient" of chlorine to determine salinity,Although he determined a slightly different value for the coefficient, Dittmar regarded his analysis of the sea water samples from the Challenger expedition as a vindication of Forchhammer's work.Knudsen, Forch and Sorensen, in 1902 gave a lengthy gravimetric definition for salinity based on the analysis of nine water samples.As this proce- dural definition was in practice too time-consuming to perform, the above equation was presented which relates the determination of salinity to that of chlorinity.The work of Knudsen, Forch and Sorensen, and that of Dittmar before them, wasaccepted as demonstrating the constancy of ionic proportionality, and the equation was a cornerstone of chemical oceanographyfrom 1902 to 1958.
    [Show full text]
  • Poison and Revenge in Seventeenth Century English Drama
    "Revenge Should Have No Bounds": Poison and Revenge in Seventeenth Century English Drama The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Woodring, Catherine. 2015. "Revenge Should Have No Bounds": Poison and Revenge in Seventeenth Century English Drama. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:17463987 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA “Revenge should have no bounds”: Poison and Revenge in Seventeenth Century English Drama A dissertation presented by Catherine L. Reedy Woodring to The Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of English Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts May 2015 © 2015 – Catherine L. Reedy Woodring All rights reserved. Professor Stephen Greenblatt Catherine L. Reedy Woodring “Revenge should have no bounds”: Poison and Revenge in Seventeenth Century English Drama Abstract The revenge- and poison- filled tragedies of seventeenth century England astound audiences with their language of contagion and disease. Understanding poison as the force behind epidemic disease, this dissertation considers the often-overlooked connections between stage revenge and poison. Poison was not only a material substance bought from a foreign market. It was the subject of countless revisions and debates in early modern England. Above all, writers argued about poison’s role in the most harrowing epidemic disease of the period, the pestilence, as both the cause and possible cure of this seemingly contagious disease.
    [Show full text]
  • Shakespeare's Use of the Christian Dimension in Four Major Tragedies
    SHAKESPEARE'S USE OF THE CHRISTIAN DIMENSION IN FOUR MAJOR TRAGEDIES, AND ITS DRAMATIC EFFECT ON EARLY AUDIENCES by Janet Mary Cockin A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY The Shakespeare Institute Stratford upon Avon University of Birmingham April 2003. University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. SUMMARY. Christian values permeated all aspects of human activity in sixteenth century England; the basic truths of Christianity were largely unquestioned, and these would underlie the views on life and death, whether consciously formulated or not, of most of those who made up Shakespeare's first audiences. I explore the ways in which Shakespeare responded to, and significantly departed from, his sources in four major tragedies with Christian (or non-pagan) backgrounds: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello andMacbeth. In the first chapter, I discuss the prevailing religious tensions in England as Shakespeare was growing up, and the theological instruction he is likely to have received. I examine the interaction of these theological ideas with the cultural exploration of ideas taking place in the English Renaissance.
    [Show full text]
  • Revenge Tragedy | Eleanor Prosser (Essay Date 1967)
    Literary Criticism (1400-1800): Revenge Tragedy | Eleanor Prosser (essay date 1967) Revenge Tragedy | Eleanor Prosser (essay date 1967) ©2009 eNotes.com, Inc. or its Licensors. Please see copyright information at the end of this document. Eleanor Prosser (essay date 1967) SOURCE: Prosser, Eleanor. “Revenge on the English Stage, 1562-1607.” In Hamlet and Revenge, pp. 36-73. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1967. [In the following essay, Prosser examines a vast array of revenge tragedies in an effort to elucidate “the moral response of the Elizabethan audience to revenge itself.”] Although a study of the Elizabethan revenge play normally restricts itself to plays related to the “Kydian formula” as defined by Fredson Bowers, our concern in this chapter is with the moral response of the Elizabethan audience to revenge itself. If we can determine the audience's reaction to specific revenge motifs in any type of play (in a Biblical drama such as David and Bethsabe, a chronicle history such as Edward II, or a comedy such as The Dumb Knight, as well as in a revenge play proper such as The Spanish Tragedy), we should be better prepared to recognize established conventions. For an audience, a given convention evokes a given response: a bastard son who chafes at his inferior position is a dangerous fellow, whether he appears in Much Ado About Nothing or King Lear. We shall, accordingly, examine all plays produced between 1562 and 1607 in which revenge is a clearly defined motive.1 To understand the full impact of the revenge motif on the Elizabethan audience, we should probably start with the medieval drama.
    [Show full text]
  • Renaissance and Reformation, 1982
    Renaissance et Réforme / 289 broad definitions of Mannerism for the composers working in Avignon and similar courts during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries? Like their Italian counterparts two centuries later, these Mannerists concentrated upon secular music, working with genres, forms, contrapuntal styles, and concepts of dissonance that had been perfected by their mid-fourteenth century predecessors. Their self-conscious experiments with notation and rhythmic complexities, their daring forays into hitherto unknown harmonic realms and their attempts to create individualistic styles marked them as being Mannerists, even if their contemporary theorists might not have dwelt upon that theme in their writings. This earlier manifestation of Mannerism had one interesting link with the later one, for Francesco Petrarca, whose lyrics inspired so many Man- nerist composers in the sixteenth century, hovered around Avignon for years, repelled by it and yet unable to abandon it. The bibliography is simply superb, including fifty-three pages of primary sources in addition to the extensive listing of secondary sources. The printing of the book is pleasing and the engraving of the musical examples exquisite. The two indices (names and titles) are certainly helpful, but for some unknown reason there is no subject index. Consequently, since the Council of Trent was neither a work nor an author it is listed in neither index. It is also unfortunate that the publisher did not furnish footnotes instead of the troublesome end- notes, particularly since the author has relegated to these notes lengthy transla- tions of excellent quality (tending to be more literal than poetic), important titles and dates, and interesting digressions.
    [Show full text]
  • The Subjectivity of Revenge: Senecan Drama and the Discovery of the Tragic in Kyd and Shakespeare
    THE SUBJECTIVITY OF REVENGE: SENECAN DRAMA AND THE DISCOVERY OF THE TRAGIC IN KYD AND SHAKESPEARE JORDICORAL D.PHIL THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND RELATED LITERATURE SEPTEMBER 2001 But all the time life, always one and the same, always incomprehensibly keeping its identity, fills the universe and is renewed at every moment in innumerable combinations and metamorphoses. You are anxious about whether you will rise from the dead or not, but you have risen already - you rose from the dead when you were born and you didn't notice it. Will you feel pain? Do the tissues feel their disintegration? In other words, what will happen to your consciousness. But what is consciousness? Let's see. To try consciously to go to sleep is a sure way of having insomnia, to try to be conscious of one's own digestion is a sure way to upset the stomach. Consciousness is a poison when we apply it to ourselves. Consciousness is a beam of light directed outwards, it lights up the way ahead of us so that we do not trip up. It's like the head-lamps on a railway engine - if you turned the beam inwards there would be a catastrophe. 'So what will happen to your consciousness? Your consciousness, yours, not anybody else's. Well, what are you? That's the crux of the matter. Let's try to find out. What is it about you that you have always known as yourself? What are you conscious of in yourself? Your kidneys? Your liver? Your blood vessels? - No.
    [Show full text]
  • Frank Ardolino
    32 Translating Contexts: The Purpose of Hieronimo’s Soliman and Perseda Playlet in The Spanish Tragedy Frank Ardolino Soliman and Perseda was entered in the Stationers’ Register on November 20, 1592. Like The Spanish Tragedy, it was an anonymous and undated play, whose first edition exists in a unique copy assumed to be published in 1592. Further, it was registered one month after Abel Jeffes entered his edition of The Spanish Tragedy by Edward White, who was involved in a legal battle with Jeffes over Arden of Faversham and The Spanish Tragedy. Finally, like The Spanish Tragedy, the original edition was followed by a subsequent edition which claimed to be “newly corrected and amended” but provided only two important emendations accompanied by a “haphazard” correction of spelling and punctuation errors (Murray viii). Its direct bibliographic, thematic, and stylistic similarities to Hieronimo’s revenge playlet have given rise to the inevitable and probably warranted conclusion that the author of The Spanish Tragedy also wrote Soliman and Perseda (Erne 161). The chronological relationship between the anonymous play Soliman and Perseda and the Soliman and Perseda play-within-the- play in The Spanish Tragedy is difficult to ascertain. Did Kyd expand the playlet into the play after he wrote The Spanish Tragedy, as Lukas Erne has maintained (160)? Or did Kyd write the play first and then reduce and adapt it for the play-within-the- play? Hieronimo explains that he wrote the playlet when he was a student and is adapting it now at the opportune time for revenge. Is this Kyd, in the guise of an author analogue, saying that he has condensed Soliman and Perseda to create Hieronimo’s revenge playlet? Although it is impossible to state with certainty who is the author or what is the order of composition for these works, it is important to analyze the reasons for Kyd’s inclusion of the material in The Spanish Tragedy.
    [Show full text]
  • The Paradox of Elizabethan Revenge
    THE PARADOX OF ELIZABETHAN REVENGE FROM HORESTES TO HAMLET ANTON CHARLES ARULANANDAM MASTER OF ARTS - HONOURS 1995 THE UNVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES THE PARADOX OF ELIZABETHAN REVENGE FROM HORESTES TO HAMLET CONTENTS Acknowledgement Page 2 List ofIllustrations Page 3 Abstract Page 4 Introduction Page 5 Chapter One Page 33 Chapter Two Page 55 Chapter Three Page 75 Chapter Four · Page 93 Chapter Five Page 112 Conclusion Page 142 ACKNOWLEDGMENT I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to my Supervisor, Dr. Richard Medelaine, and Co-Supervisor, Professor Mary Chan, who not only awakened my serious interest in the drama of the English Renaissance, but tolerated and encouraged this graduate student in the preparation of this thesis. I also wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Bruce Johnson, Professor Michael Hollington, Associate Professor Roslyn Haynes and Associate Professor Peter Alexander, Head, School of English, the staff of the School of English and my colleagues, Pauline Byrnes and Brian Couch, and my wife, Edith, for their assistance and encouragement. A significant debt is owed to the numerous critics mentioned in the footnotes and Bibliography for their scholarly discourse on the revenge genre. Anton C. Arulanandam 2 December 1995. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Gratefully Acknowledged The Revenge of Orestes From Boccaccio's De Mulieribus Claris, Ulm, 1473, fol.xxxv verso, p. 32. The Murder of Horatio in The Spanish Tragedie From the edition of 1633, p. 54. The Revenge of Titus Andronicus From The Lamentable and Tragical History of Titus Andronicus, a ballad ( British Museum, Huth 50 - 69). p. 74. ( By kind courtesy of Willard Farnham, The Medieval Heritage ofElizabethan Tragedy, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1963, ps.
    [Show full text]
  • Blood Beliefs in Early Modern Europe
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Hertfordshire Research Archive Blood beliefs in early modern Europe Francesca Matteoni Submitted to the University of Hertfordshire for the degree of PhD. January, 2009 1 Contents Abstract 4 1. Blood themes: Introduction 5 1.1 Blood, feelings and the soul: perspectives 5 1.2 Late medieval and early modern Europe: blood and the sealed body 11 1.3 History and Anthropology: methodologies 15 1.4 Blood, power and violence. Anthropological views 19 1.5 Chapters’ outline 24 2. Drawing blood: The Devil’s pact and witchcraft 27 2.1 Witchcraft and blood 27 2.2 Intruders: from Jews to witches 28 2.3 The devil’s brood and the cannibalistic feast 33 2.4 The pact 43 2.5 Harmful magic: vampirism, lameness and pins 54 2.6 Domestic spaces 59 2.7 The decaying body 66 3. Supernatural beings: Fairies, vampires, werewolves 71 3.1 Blood and supernatural beings 71 3.2 Fairies and witches 72 3.3 Elf-shot and milk-stealing 75 3.4 Fairyland and the dead 84 3.5 The vampire 90 3.6 Human counter-measures 98 3.7 Shapeshifting and the werewolf 101 4. The integral body: Theories of blood 108 2 4.1 The liquid body and the spirited blood 108 4.2 Consumptive diseases 116 4.3 Bleeding and putrefaction 120 4.4 Breaking physical boundaries: blood and imagination 124 4.5 Passions of the mind. Frenzy, madness and melancholy 130 4.6 The intruder: epilepsy, envy and fascination 134 4.7 Menstruation 138 4.8 The diffusion of medical theories and folk-remedies 147 5.
    [Show full text]
  • A Guide to Hamlet Criticism
    University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 1937 A guide to Hamlet criticism. Helen Moran University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Moran, Helen, "A guide to Hamlet criticism." (1937). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1842. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/1842 This Master's Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. UNIVERSIIJ.1Y 01<" LOUISVILLE A G U IDE T 0 HAM LET C R I TIC ISM A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty Of the Graduate School of the University of Louisville In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Of Master of Arts Department of English By Helen Moran Year 1937 F A GUIDE TO HAMLET CRITICISM :: TABLE OF CONTENTS CONTENTS page Preface v ., Chapter I The Shifting Trends in 1 Shakespeare Criticism II The Origin and Development 23 of the Early Romantic Cri tici sm of Ha1111et (1784 - 1900 ) III The Realists' Hamlet 41 (1866 - 1936) IV The Twent ieth Century 75 Romanticists' Hamlet r; Conclusion 98 : Bibliography 105 1- .. - ..... ~--~--- ---~ PRE F ACE A Guide to "Ham1et" Criticism is the story of the after-life of Shakespeare's tragic hero.
    [Show full text]