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Fluid and Loci: Death and Memory in Shakespearean Plays

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Fluid and Loci: Death and Memory in Shakespearean Plays FLUID AND LOCI: DEATH AND MEMORY IN SHAKESPEAREAN PLAYS Submitted by Zhiyan Zhang To the University of Exeter As a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English In August 2012 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Zhiyan Zhang 1 Acknowledgements I would like to express my appreciation to the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) and the Overseas Research Students Awards Scheme (ORSAS), whose scholarships and support have made my research possible. My thanks also go to those who have contributed to this thesis and supported me in one way or the other. First and foremost, I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to my supervisors Professor Philip Schwyzer and Dr Pascale Aebischer for their invaluable advice, kind encouragement and unfailing patience through the course of my PhD thesis writing. I really appreciate Professor Philip Schwyzer’s excellent supervision and his invaluable time devoted to reading my drafts and giving me comments. Due thanks also go to the Centre of Early Modern Studies and the College of Humanities at the University of Exeter where I have met a lot of helpful staff who either gave me insightful suggestion on my research or helped me in other ways. Second, I owe a great deal to the conferences at which I had opportunities to present my papers to international scholars with similar interests, whose stimulating questions and valuable comments have helped shaping my thinking in immeasurable ways. At the British Shakespeare Association (BSA) Conference 2009 and 2012, I had opportunities to talk with Professor Alexander 2 Huang and Professor Bob White; to the latter I owe my warmest thanks as he kindly gave me some constructive comments on my paper. I would also like to express my gratitude to Professor William Engel for his much-appreciated feedback. Due thanks also go out to the editors, Professor Paolo Santangelo, Assistant Professor Jeremy Lopes, Yves Camus and others ,who have helped me to publish my papers. My deepest gratitude also goes to the examiners of this thesis, Professor Gerald Maclean and Dr Tian Yuan Tan. Third, I would like to thank Hunan University, and specifically the College of Chinese Language and Literature where I obtained my BA and MA. My final thanks are to my friends, teachers and family members for their support, encouragement and love. 3 Abstract This study combines formal analysis of Shakespeare’s texts with an investigation of early modern English culture in order to explore the social energy circulating between. It argues that the conceptual categories of fluidity and loci are two features prevalent not only in Shakespeare’s plays specifically, but also in early modern English culture generally. Chapter One maps out the scholarship on death and memory in early modern English culture; Chapter Two investigates fluidity and loci in numerous forms, including humoral bodies, identities, money, commodity and texts, as regards physiology, economics, cosmology and politics. Chapter Three on Hamlet investigates corruption and fragmentation regarding both death and memory, and it also argues that Hamlet is troubled by memory’s excessiveness and fickleness. Chapter Four explores time, memory, emotion and death in Macbeth, followed by a study of Henry V, The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale in Chapter Five. There are two points underlying the argument of the whole thesis. The first point is that, whereas the brain-centred understanding of memory was predominant in early modern England as in other European countries, there was also a heart-centred tradition. Although the brain and reason still occupied pivotal positions in early modern England, the heart and emotion were given 4 substantial attention by Shakespeare among others. As regards the relationship between the heart and the emotions, there were also two divergent attitudes to emotion: praise of emotion and denigration of emotion. As the connotations and history of the term “emotion” are complex, this study distinguishes between it and its synonyms such as passion, affection, feeling and the Chinese concept of qing. Other Chinese philosophies such as Daoism and theories including Yin-Yang theory and “Three Immortality” are also explored to shed light on the foci of this study. Secondly, this thesis argues that there are two categories of memory, namely, locative memory and fluid memory, and Shakespeare was influenced by both. It also contends that the eradication and displacement of memory provoked anxiety about memory, just as the displacement and annihilation of corpses, mainly caused by plagues and the Reformation as well as other factors, lead to heightened anxiety about death in early modern English culture. 5 Table of Contents Title Page………………………………………………………………………1 Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………2 Abstract………………………………………………………………………..4 Table of Contents……………………………………………………………...6 Chapter One: Introduction…………………………………………………..9 Death and Memory in Western Culture and Chinese Culture………………………..11 Crisis and Anxiety of Death and Memory in Early Modern England…………………28 Locative Memory and the Brain………….………….………….……………….35 Fluid Memory and the Heart………….………….………….…………………. 45 Material Memories and Metaphors of Memories………….………….……………55 Methodology and Summary of Chapters………….………….………….………..61 Conclusion………….………….………….………….………….…………...69 Chapter Two: Fluid and loci in early modern England………….………..71 Humoral Body in Confinement………….………….………….………………..73 Identity Within and Without………….………….………….………….……….84 Economy: From Endogenous to Exogenous Loci………….………….…………...94 Boundary and Authority in Texts………….………….………….……………..100 Fluid in Astronomy and Religion………….………….………….……………..105 Conclusion………….………….………….………….………….…………..110 6 Chapter Three: Death and Memory in Hamlet………….………………..111 Hamlet’s Memory: Fluid, Excessive and Fragmentary………….………….……..112 Hamlet’s Anxiety of Death: Corruption and Fragmentation………….……………121 “Speak with daggers”: Hamlet’s Dissection of Death and Memory………….……..127 Aesthetic of Decline in the Graveyard Scenes in Hamlet and A Dream of Red Mansions… ………….………….………….………….………….……………………137 “Report Me and My Cause Aright”: Life and Death Associated with Memory ….…..147 Conclusion………….………….………….………….………….………….160 Chapter Four: Time and Memory in Macbeth………….………….……...161 Macbeth’s Time and Memory………….………….………….………………..163 Lady Macbeth: on the Rack of Time and Memory………….………….…………175 “She Should Have Died Hereafter”: Death and Emotion Qing 情…….……………182 Shakespeare’s Memory Art in Macbeth………….………….………….……….188 Conclusion………….………….………….………….………….………….198 Chapter Five: Memory, Metaphors and Morality ………….…………...201 Henry V’s Economic Exploitation of Memory…………………………………..202 Forgetting, Killing and Morality De 德 in Henry V…….………….……………..212 Memory and Repentance in The Winter’s Tale …..……….……….……………..219 Metaphors of Memory: Cell, Sea and Book………….………….………………226 The Art of Memory in The Tempest………….………….………….…………..239 Conclusion………….………….………….………….………….………… 247 Conclusion……….………….………….………….………….……………..249 7 Appendices……….………….………….………….………….…………….263 Bibliography……….………….………….………….………….…………..264 8 Chapter One Introduction As readers and scholars have always recognized, Death and Memory are two themes prevalent in Shakespearean plays, especially in his tragedies.1 They were also two issues widely considered and pondered upon in early modern England when Shakespeare was composing his plays.2 In recent decades, works on death and studies on memory in early modern England have increasingly become a trend, despite that death has been an eternal topic as long as human beings exist. This study is based on close reading of Shakespeare’s plays and all-around analysis of historical culture of early modern England, and by mainly adopting the new historicism, it focuses on exploring the social energy circulating between Shakespeare’s plays and the broader society as Stephen Greenblatt3 has 1 The search results in Shakespeare Concordance (http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/concordance/) shows that, despite words like “deaths”, “death’s”, “deathful”, “die” and other synonyms, the exact word “death” alone occurs 918 times in 806 speeches within 42 works. Results related to memory are also phenomenal: “Memory” (58), “remember” (199), “remembrance” (65), “forget” (95), and other words such as “remembering” “forgetting” and “Lethe” also appear in some works. The frequent appearance of the words “death” and “memory” and those with similar meanings may give us a general idea of their prevalence in Shakespeare’s works. 2 The art of memory were revived and performed in Italy and spread to other countries including England before and during Elizabethan era. Giulio Camillo’s memory theatre, the memory palace in Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, the memory palace built by Matteo Ricci in China, John Dee’s mysterious library, Giordano Bruno’s works on the art of memory, and Ramon Lull’s involvement in performing the art, more or less show people’s concern of memory. The Reformation also contributed to the increasing concern on memory. In terms of death, the frequent plagues taking place in European countries are one of the factors leading to people’s concern of death. 3 Stephen
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