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UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Past Tense of Gender on the Early Modern Stage Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7gc6z4b4 Author Gottlieb, Christine Marie Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The Past Tense of Gender on the Early Modern Stage A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in English by Christine Marie Gottlieb 2016 © Copyright by Christine Marie Gottlieb 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Past Tense of Gender on the Early Modern Stage by Christine Marie Gottlieb Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles, 2016 Professor Albert R. Braunmuller, Co-Chair Professor Lowell Gallagher, Co-Chair “The Past Tense of Gender on the Early Modern Stage” explores how death undoes constructed binaries of gender and sexuality and levels distinctions between men and women, virgins and “whores,” gendered bodies and neuter objects. While criticism on death in the early modern period frequently explores the trope of death as a leveler, a simultaneously celebrated and feared challenge to hierarchy, this dissertation argues that theatrical performances of this trope in plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries invent what we would today understand as queer embodiment. The dissertation analyzes the diverse ways in which dead bodies are conceptualized in early modern religious, scientific, and memorial discourses while considering the cadaver’s ability to rupture all social constructs. ii The introduction begins with Ophelia’s transformation into “One that was a woman.” The Gravedigger’s riddle shows how death destabilizes traditional categories of gender and sexuality as a body transitions from being a “he” or a “she” to an “it.” The first chapter shows the unacknowledged but ubiquitous queer implications of death in early modern iconography, funerary art, and anatomical texts. The second chapter considers how the cadaverous performances of skulls in Hamlet (1600-1) and Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy (1606) reveal the gender performativity of skulls in anatomical treatises and memento mori iconography. The third chapter analyzes how Othello (1604) and John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1629-33) critique the conventional anatomical obsession with hymens and wombs as the sole signifiers of female sexuality by shifting focus to the heart: an anatomical, spiritual, and sexual organ that is simultaneously inscrutable cadaverous matter. The final chapter analyzes theatrical resurrections in The Winter’s Tale (1611) and The Lady’s Tragedy (1611) in relation to theological debates regarding the gender of resurrected bodies. The staging of dead bodies that return in both plays deconstructs the binary between the aesthetic animation of automata and the “natural” resurrection of embodied persons. iii The dissertation of Christine Marie Gottlieb is approved. Katherine C. King Claire McEachern Robert N. Watson Albert R. Braunmuller, Committee Co-Chair Lowell Gallagher, Committee Co-Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2016 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………….vi Vita………………………………………………………………...……………………………viii Introduction: Ophelia and the Past Tense of Gender……….……..……….….…….………….…1 Chapter 1: Cadaverous Performances in the Renaissance………………..……..……………….22 Chapter 2: Sexing the Skull………………………………………………….………………..…51 Chapter 3: Anatomies of the Heart……………………..…………..…………………………....89 Chapter 4: The Aesthetics of Resurrection……...………………………………….…..…........159 Conclusion………………...…………………………………………………………..………..216 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………….218 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance and support of my committee. I will always be grateful to A. R. Braunmuller, who has served as an invaluable mentor throughout my time at UCLA. Lowell Gallagher has inspired me at every step of the dissertation writing process. Robert N. Watson, Claire McEachern, and Katherine King provided generous feedback and encouragement that I sincerely appreciate. I am extremely grateful to my friends and colleagues at UCLA, especially the wonderful people in my cohort and the Medieval and Renaissance graduate student community. Special thanks are due to Holly Moyer and Alexandra Zobel for their friendship, support, and countless thought-provoking conversations. I am thankful for the teaching opportunities I have had at UCLA. The English Department, Writing Programs, Disability Studies, and the Center for Community Learning provided supportive communities that encouraged my growth as an instructor. I would like to thank Chris Mott for his mentorship, enthusiasm, and support and Beth Goodhue for guiding my work in community-based teaching and learning. I am grateful to the faculty members I have had the pleasure of assisting and to the students who have enriched my work. Dissertation research was funded by a UCLA English Department Dissertation Research Fellowship, a Mellon Foundation Pre-Dissertation Fellowship, and a Harry and Yvonne Lenart Graduate Travel Fellowship. Conference travel related to the dissertation was made possible by travel grants from UCLA’s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Earlier versions of my analysis of The Revenger’s Tragedy in Chapter 2 and The Lady’s Tragedy in Chapter 4 appear in a different context in my article, “Middleton’s Traffic in Dead vi Women: Chaste Corpses as Property in The Revenger’s Tragedy and The Lady’s Tragedy” in English Literary Renaissance 45:2 (Spring, 2015): 255-274. I would like to thank English Literary Renaissance and Blackwell Publishing. I am eternally grateful to my family and friends for their love and support: Michael and Delia Gottlieb, Michael Paul Gottlieb, my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, Christina Wang, Meghan Gill, Janice Galizia, and the many others who have encouraged me along the way. Thanks for cheering me on! vii VITA Education University of California, Los Angeles C.Phil., English, Spring 2012 M.A., English, Fall 2010 New York University B.A., English, 2006 Minor: Gender & Sexuality Studies Publications “Pedagogy and the Art of Death: Reparative Readings of Death and Dying in Margaret Edson’s Wit.” Journal of Medical Humanities. Web. 19 November 2015. “Middleton’s Traffic in Dead Women: Chaste Corpses as Property in The Revenger’s Tragedy and The Lady’s Tragedy.” English Literary Renaissance 45:2 (Spring, 2015): 255-274. Courses Designed and Taught UCLA Department of English • Critical Reading and Writing: Bodies, Texts, and Selves (Spring 2016) • Critical Reading and Writing with Service Learning: Literature and Health Care (Fall 2014) • Critical Reading and Writing with Service Learning: Literature and/as Care (Spring 2013) • Critical Reading and Writing: Bodies and Parts (Spring 2012) • Critical Reading and Writing: Ghosts and Memory (Fall 2011) UCLA Departments of English and Disability Studies • Studies in Disability Literatures: Shakespearean Disability Studies (Summer 2015) UCLA Writing Programs • Composition, Rhetoric, and Language: Identities and Institutions (Winter 2013) • Composition, Rhetoric, and Language: American Arguments (Fall 2012) Additional Teaching Experience Coordinator, UCLA Center for Community Learning • Disability Studies Community Internship (Winter 2016) Teaching Assistant, UCLA Department of Disability Studies • Perspectives on Disability Studies (Winter 2015) Teaching Assistant, UCLA Department of English • English Literature to 1660 (Fall 2008, Spring 2010) • Shakespeare for Non-Majors (Fall 2015) • Shakespeare: Poems and Early Plays (Winter 2009, Spring 2009, Fall 2009) • Shakespeare: Later Plays (Winter 2010) (Online: Summer 2012, Summer 2013) • Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon and London (Summer 2010, Summer 2011) • Theatrical Renaissance (Winter 2012) viii Selected Conference Presentations “King Lear as Dismodern Tragedy.” Paper presented at the British Shakespeare Association’s Disability and Shakespearean Theatre Symposium, Glasgow, April 2016. “Sexing the Skull.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, St. Louis, April 2014. “Saints and Whores: Anatomizing Female Sexuality on the Early Modern Stage.” Paper presented at the 48th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 2013. “Desdemona’s Equivocal Corpse.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, Toronto, March 2013. ix Introduction: Ophelia and the Past Tense of Gender Ophelia’s death turns her into a riddle. The Gravedigger tells Hamlet that the grave he makes is for neither man nor woman; instead it is for: “One that was a woman, sir, but, rest her soul, she’s dead” (5.1.135-36).1 The Gravedigger’s literalism posits the transience of gender identity by highlighting the body’s status as a past-tense woman. Yet gender persists in the present tense through the phrases, “rest her soul, she’s dead.” Death poses a problem for pronouns. How can a thing, “One that was a woman” in the past tense, also be a she that is dead? The awkwardness of the commonplace saying is highlighted by the radical dislocation of the subject in the first clause. This phrase does for gendered identity what Hamlet’s “I am dead” (5.2.338) does for identity as such.2 A he, a she, or an I cannot actually be dead in the present tense, except insofar as the fantasies
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