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Dying to Learn, Learning to Die, the Craft of Dying in Early Modern English Drama and the Cultivation of Dying-Voice Literacy

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Dying to Learn, Learning to Die, the Craft of Dying in Early Modern English Drama and the Cultivation of Dying-Voice Literacy City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2-2016 Dying to Learn, Learning to Die, The Craft of Dying in Early Modern English Drama and the Cultivation of Dying-Voice Literacy Simon Gaston Fortin City University of New York, Graduate Center How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1209 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] DYING TO LEARN, LEARNING TO DIE THE CRAFT OF DYING IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH DRAMA AND THE CULTIVATION OF DYING-VOICE LITERACY by SIMON G. FORTIN A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2016 ii © 2016 SIMON G. FORTIN All Rights Reserved iii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Mario DiGangi_________________________________ ______________ _____________________________________________ Date Chair of the Examining Committee Executive Officer Carrie Hintz___________________________________ _______________ ______________________________________________ Date Deputy Executive Officer Mario DiGangi______________________ Richard C. McCoy___________________ Wayne Koestenbaum_________________ Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iv Abstract DYING TO LEARN, LEARNING TO DIE THE CRAFT OF DYING IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH DRAMA AND THE CULTIVATION OF DYING-VOICE LITERACY by SIMON G. FORTIN Adviser: Professor Mario DiGangi This dissertation contends that, through their relentless dramatization of agonies, the early modern English dramatists taught their audiences how to die. Attending a play where characters devised, discussed, prepared for, plotted, inflicted, endured and witnessed death, constituted an apprenticeship I demonstrate, akin to going to school, though informal it may have been, where audiences learned about mortality, death as an event, and dying as a process. Thus, this study points to the early modern English stage as a locus of human achievement that acculturates the experience of dying during the long Reformation, this complex historical unfolding that recalibrates many doctrines relating to death, dying, funereal rites and the afterlife. The dramatists accomplish this acculturation by positing “literacies of the liminal” that are alternatives to the pervading religious protocols of preparation for death known as the ars moriendi (the craft or the art of dying), a continental literary tradition born in the late medieval period. Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists I show, aim at more than merely representing the agonal process; living in a moment of religious fluidity, these stage artists interrogate mortality; they embody and encode ‘the living death’ by resorting to their two-fold agency: the creation of an imaginative/literary stage-bound idiom and the immediacy of performance required for its expression. Like any living language, this v stage-bound idiom is an assemblage of influences and social energies and as such, the dying-voice literacy I suggest this canon of drama fosters is not sui generis. This dissertation examines this novel theatrical idiom against the background of its inspirations and influences. This study posits the craft of dying literary tradition as one of many catalysts for the advent of the theatre as a school for dying. Thus the didactic potencies of this process of acculturation are what I examine. Dying to Learn, Learning to Die, as my title suggests, aims at animating an eternal paradox: the eagerness to learn what happens as one dies can only be sated by personal experience, and that experience, repellent to most, entails the irreversibility of self-dissolution. Theatregoers vicariously apprentice the praxis of dying by witnessing fictions that obliquely teach them how to die, and more probably how not to die. Though the literature of the ars moriendi tradition has of late benefited from a welcome scrutiny by scholars across disciplines, the study of its poetic impact upon playwriting has been little explored and has yet much to yield. Though my dissertation resolutely borrows a cultural historicist approach, it hosts a frank Presentist agenda. At the current time, the field of Death Studies is experiencing an explosion of interest, possibly explained by the ever-increasing human lifespan; both secular and religious individuals have more time to ponder the process of dying. Although Death Studies are not new, the concept of dying-voice literacy is; I coin the term in what is an inaugural gesture at using the grand theatrical deaths of the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatrical canon as heuristic occasions, where these profound meditations through drama are used as keys for unlocking perhaps the most difficult of conversations: what will my death, and the deaths of those I love, be? A dying-voice vi literate person is one who is willing to engage in the exploration, preparation and design of her own death, and the deaths of others, by engaging with, interpreting, absorbing and acting on the literary representations of death and dying across time and cultures. My advocacy for a dying-voice literacy is already at work: Dying to Learn, Learning to Die, is the basis of a performance, a recital of death scenes that I have developed and already performed several times. vii Table of Contents Acknowledgements viii Chapter 1 1 No Grutching Allowed Or, How the Craft of Dying Tradition Became an Objet d’Art Chapter 2 53 “Let Us Sit Upon the Ground,” Shall We? Fashioning Dying-Voice Literacy through the Death of Kings Chapter 3 111 Female Swan Songs and their “Size of Sorrow:” Constructions of Feminine Death Chapter 4 174 Funny Gethsemane: Queering the Art of Dying Epilogue 228 “Every Time We Say Goodbye” Annex I 235 A Brief History of the Swan Song Trope Bibliography 244 viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The years spent studying the representation of agony have forced me to look hard at what really matters in the finite time I have been given. Because this dissertation concerns itself with what Frank Kermode calls “the sense of an ending,” my reader will forgive my opening these acknowledgments where they habitually end. None of this work would make much sense without the support, the love and the brilliant guidance of my husband Paul Browde, who for nearly thirty years has nurtured the passionate adventure I call my life. Paul knows all too well and met all too soon such issues of death; his wisdom, his courage, his talent and appetite for life are everywhere embedded in these pages. Pursuing this doctorate degree, I benefited from a Chancellor’s scholarship from the Graduate Center at City University of New York, and for this, I am deeply grateful. I wish to thank all the teaching faculty of the English Department at the Graduate Center, but particularly Professor Joan Richardson who has kept her benevolent eye over my work during this long journey. Professor Mario DiGangi chaired my dissertation committee and was a precious ally and an unwavering believer in this project; his intelligence and generosity proved rare friends to my endeavor and his gentle scolding kept me in check. Professors Richard C. McCoy and Wayne Koestenbaum co-chaired my dissertation committee; they brought their rich acumen and expertise to our discussions and I am grateful to all three readers not solely for the attention they gave to my project, but for the inspiring excellence of their own works that I not only admire but wish to emulate. ix I wish to thank Columbia University Professor Maura Spiegel for her kind advice in moments of intellectual despair, and Marsha Hurst for her support in my study of this difficult issue; Professor Hurst provided me with opportunities to try out some of my ideas on her Masters’ Students in Columbia University’s Narrative Medicine Program. I thank Professor Bella Mirabella, who taught me at New York University and remained an attentive ear and a staunch supporter of my pursuing this degree; the same goes for professor Leslie Satin; to both of them, my friendship and heartfelt thanks. For 7 years I wrote of Swan Songs and my work was constantly informed by the vocal work I do week after week with my voice teacher and beloved friend, Ms. Sally Wilfert. I wish to thank Sharon Laurence, for her enduring friendship and the hospitality of her California home where I wrote many pages of this study while watching her tulips grow. I likewise thank Kim and John Grau for hosting me in Berkeley where I wrote in the comfort of their hospitality and friendship. Heartfelt thanks to the following essential presences of my life: Ms. Carolyn Jacoby who kept me honest and whose own integrity is a model I could only aspire to match. My fellow doctoral students at the Graduate Center but particularly Linda Neiberg whose passion for the topic was an exquisite foil to my research. My Ravina/New York family David Hoos, Murray Nossel, Craig Harwood, Tim Saternow, Natalie Gamsu who have felt the cost of my inaccessible self during the many years this journey lasted; I am glad to come back to the Scrabble table with three very special letters (and remember, the H is worth four points). X I must thank Dominique Fortin, Stephanie Fortin and Marie-Paule Fortin, my brothers Mark Fortin and Jean Fortin for their gift to believe when mine wavered. My parents in-law, true role models for my life, Professor Selma Browde, and Judge Jules Browde and our entire family for their constant support, and their accommodating my idiosyncratic reading and writing schedule year after year in Fishoek, South Africa.
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