Couvade and Culture from Shakespeare to Milton
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Jovial Pregnancies: Couvade and Culture from Shakespeare to Milton Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Johnson, Nicholas Shane Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 26/09/2021 17:56:27 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193577 1 JOVIAL PREGNANCIES: COUVADE AND CULTURE FROM SHAKESPEARE TO MILTON by Nicholas Shane Johnson ____________________ A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College of THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2009 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Nicholas Shane Johnson entitled JOVIAL PREGNANCIES: COUVADE AND CULTURE FROM SHAKESPEARE TO MILTON and recommended that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy ___________________________________Meg Lota Brown __ Date: 20 October 2008 Professor Meg Lota Brown ___________________________________Frederick Kiefer ___ Date: 20 October 2008 Professor Frederick Kiefer ___________________________________John Ulreich ______ Date: 20 October 2008 Professor John Ulreich Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. ___________________________________Meg Lota Brown __ Date: 20 October 2008 Dissertation Director: Meg Lota Brown 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED: Nicholas Shane Johnson 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Completion of this project would have been much more difficult without the assistance of particular organizations and individuals. Travel grants from the University of Arizona Group for Early Modern Studies and the University of Arizona Medieval, Renaissance, and Restoration Committee supported archival research. The Department of English provided a semester of reduced teaching duties, a summer writing fellowship, and, finally, a semester of fellowship support with no teaching duties. Virtually all of the actual writing for this project was completed during those terms of fellowship support. I would especially like to acknowledge Meg Lota Brown, my dissertation director, for allowing me the latitude to work uninterrupted for long stretches of time. Also, I must thank Meg Lota for allowing me an equally important latitude in intellectual investigation. This project did not develop in a rational, linear fashion. Meg Lota had the patience to let me pursue research trajectories as I saw fit. The interdisciplinary nature of this project owes much to Meg Lota’s ability to follow, question, and critique arguments involving many different types of claims and evidence. 5 DEDICATION Though this dissertation has given a face to my intellectual life, the faces of my entire life look back at me through the photographs taped, scribbly-scrabbly, to my desk. My wife, Ingrid, and our daughters, Simone and Neve, helped me keep this project in perspective, as a single, important part of our larger life together. They were, and are, the best of distractions. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS JOVIAL PREGNANCIES: COUVADE AND CULTURE FROM SHAKESPEARE TO MILTON ABSTRACT .........................................................................................................................7 INTRODUCTION: “POP!” EPISTEMOLOGIES ..............................................................9 Brainchildren and Belly Births ..............................................................................12 Chapter Previews ...................................................................................................17 1. THE PREGNANT MAN IN SCHOLARSHIP .............................................................26 Ritual, Symptom, Syndrome, Structure .................................................................28 Minding Mother Metis ...........................................................................................39 Mimesis in/and the Cultural Couvade....................................................................48 2. WOM(B)ANLY MEN AND SACRIFICIAL FANCIES ..............................................58 Sidney’s Many Fancies ..........................................................................................67 Sacrificial Orphans.................................................................................................74 Wom(b)anly Men ...................................................................................................79 3. JOVIAL PREGNANCY ................................................................................................97 Bacon’s Easy and Gentle Passage........................................................................101 Milton’s Brooding Spirit ......................................................................................107 Peacham’s Fusion Phantasy .................................................................................113 Sacrificial Birth at Little Gidding ........................................................................118 4. MATERNAL WILL ....................................................................................................129 Just Gender...........................................................................................................131 The Sonnets’ Man(l)y Wombs .............................................................................141 Royal Siege ..........................................................................................................152 Royal Purges ........................................................................................................161 Hal’s Jovial Issues................................................................................................177 5. PRESSING ISSUES ....................................................................................................186 Materializing the Masculine Matrix .....................................................................195 Reproductive Rights.............................................................................................206 A Place that yet Minerva did not Know...............................................................211 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................219 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................226 7 ABSTRACT This study analyzes figurations of masculine pregnancy in early modern texts. Because no systematic methodology for conducting such an analysis yet exists, I have synthesized scholarship from anthropology, medicine, and psychoanalysis to construct an appropriate paradigm. Specifically, I bring together the anthropologist’s “couvade,” the physician’s “couvade syndrome,” and the psychoanalyst’s gender-inflected model of the unconscious. Informed by this interdisciplinary scholarship, I offer a composite theory of couvade desire. I then apply that theoretical model to early modern figurations of masculine pregnancy. I find that the pervasive use of such figurations during the period results from ahistorical bodily disparities and historically-specific epistemological circumstances. The so-called “literary couvade” thus modulates: it directly challenges essentialist claims on the one hand, while simultaneously acknowledging the inexorable link between masculinity and a bodily incapability to give birth. Masculinity, in this model, appears disabled . Mitigating the disability, however, is a cultural imaginary unfettered by modern anatomical knowledge. Key aspects of human reproduction were still seductively obscure in the early modern period. Women birthed babies, that much was plain; but, perhaps men had a compensatory system of reproduction. Perhaps, some speculated, that system was superior to the messy, merely material capability exclusive to women. Masculinity could, in this regard, rival maternity for social significance without disclosing any act of appropriation from maternity. Such a dynamic resembles closely Rene Girard’s paradigm of “mimetic desire.” Crucial to mimetic desire is an indifference to the ostensible object 8 on the part of both rival subjects. Relating this to the early modern