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Untimely Aesthetics Shakespeare, Anachronism and Presence

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UNTIMELY AESTHETICS SHAKESPEARE, ANACHRONISM AND PRESENCE Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by ÉTIENNE POULARD School of English, Communication and Philosophy Cardiff University 2013 This thesis is for Johann. ‘The writer must not conceal that his activity is one of arranging.’ – Walter Benjamin TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………….1 ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………2 NOTE…………………………………………………………………………………………3 SECTION I – ANACHRONISM AND PRESENCE IN SHAKESPEARE CRITICISM……………………………………………………………………………...4-76 • INTRODUCTION – SHAKESPEARE OR THE THEATRE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE……...5-47 ‘Something Repressed Which Recurs’: The Motif of Caesar’s Rome in Shakespeare’s Late Elizabethan Dramas……………………………………………5 A Brief Overview of ‘Shakespeare’s Anachronisms’ in the Criticism……………...7 Historicism’s Shakespeare: Anachronisms as Fragmentary Reflections of an Authentic Historical Scene………………………………………………………….8 1599, A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: A Key Instance of Historicist Criticism……………………………………………………………………………10 ‘I Should Be the One to Know’: Historicising New Historicism…………………..12 ‘Young Scamels from the Rock’: The Waning of New Historicism………………13 New Historicism and Poststructuralism……………………………………………15 Renaissance Self-Fashioning, or How New Historicism is Based on a Misreading of Foucault’s Power/Resistance Dialectic…………………………….17 ‘We Are Always Free’: Foucault’s Account of Resistance………………………..19 Greenblatt’s ‘Disingenuous’ Relation with French Theory— The Instance of Derrida…………………………………………………………….21 ‘The Limits of a Compromise’: French Theory as New Historicism’s Pharmakon…………………………………………………………………………24 ‘A Declaration of Critical Independence’: Renaissance Self-Fashioning as an ‘American Tale’……………………………………………………………...27 ‘A Very Puzzling Sentence’: Greenblatt’s Craving for Freedom………………….29 New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, Presentism and the Present of Criticism……………………………………………………………………………30 Presentism: Moving Beyond New Historicism…………………………………….32 Registering the Viewer’s Eye Within the Literary Scene: Anachronism as a Key Tool of Presentist Criticism……………………………….34 Literature as an Experience of Displacement: Derrida and the Questioning of Presence…………………………………………..35 The Text’s Iterability as the ‘Signature of the Thing “Shakespeare”’……………………………………………………………………..36 The Text as an Open-Ended Collection of Non-Saturable Contexts………………38 The Theatre of the Impossible: Introducing the Untimely Aesthetics of Shakespearean Drama……………………………………………………………...39 The Foreclosure of the Hermeneutic Field in Historicist Criticism: The Instances of Julius Caesar and Hamlet………………………………………..42 The Aestheticisation of the Impossibility of Presence in Henry V………………...44 Mediation as Key Factor of Différance: Lacan’s Big Other……………………….45 The Subjectivities of Literary Criticism: Meaning as a Location of Change……...46 • CHAPTER 1 – ‘VIOLATOR OF CHRONOLOGY’: SHAKESPEARE’S ANACHRONISMS IN CON-TEXT(S) …………………………….48-76 I- SHAKESPEARE, ANACHRONISM AND THE CRITICISM…………………….48-56 a. Anachronism as the Universal Fate of Literature……………………...48 b. The Constitutive Anachronism that Haunts Literary Criticism………..51 c. A ‘Disgrace to the Stage’: Shakespeare’s Anachronisms in the Eighteenth Century……………………………………………………..54 II- SHAKESPEARE THROUGH THE AGES: FROM TIMELESS GENIUS TO EMBLEM OF DIFFÉRANCE…………………..56-66 a. ‘Guided Only by His Genius’: Romantic Shakespeare in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries……………………………..6 b. ‘Shakespeare Without a Muzzle’: The Politicisation of Shakespeare as a Key Feature of Nineteenth-Century Literary Discourses………….59 c. ‘Anachrony Makes the Law’: French Theory, Différance and Shakespeare in the Twentieth Century…………………………………62 III- THE IMPLICATIONS OF ANACHRONISM FOR LITERARY CRITICISM AND ITS PRACTITIONERS………………………………………………...66-76 a. ‘The Renaissance discovery of Time’, or the Alleged Emergence of a New Subjectivity in the Period……………………….66 b. From Shakespeare’s Time to Our Own: Anachronism as Metadramatic Reflection on the Representability of History…………..70 c. Anachronism as Registration of the Viewer’s Eye Within the Representational Scene………………………………………………...73 SECTION II – HISTORICAL PRESENCE AS THE NEGATIVE ONTOLOGICAL CENTRE OF SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA……………………..77-163 • INTRODUCTORY NOTE…………………………………………………………78-81 • CHAPTER 2 – ‘PATHOLOGICAL INTERIORITY’: HUMAN CHARACTER AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TIME IN JULIUS CAESAR……………………………...82-122 INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………82-85 I- ‘WHAT IS IT O’CLOCK?’—MOVING IN THROUGH HISTORICAL LAYERS…………………………………………85-96 a. Time Out of Joint in English Culture: Anachronism as National Institution…………………………………...85 b. Temporal Crisis in Late Elizabethan England: Julius Caesar as Historical Document…………………………………89 c. ‘What is it o’clock?’: Untimeliness as Key Diegetic Feature of Julius Caesar……………………………………...93 II- SHAKESPEARE’S ROME: DIFFERENT PLANES OF REALITY……………...96-108 a. The ‘Romanness’ of Shakespeare’s Romans…………………………..96 b. ‘Rome’ as a Multi-Layered Signifier…………………………………..99 c. Unmasking the Politics of Representation: Julius Caesar as Postmodern Metadrama…………………………….103 III- A WORLD OF PHANTASMA: MAPPING OUT CHARACTER PSYCHOPATHOLOGY……………………...108-21 a. A Lesson in Character: Exploring the Inner Human Costume………………………………...108 b. Psychic Dysfunction as Characteristic Symptom of Shakespeare’s Rome……………………………………………….111 c. ‘I Think’: The Hallucinatory Dreamtime of Phantasma……………...114 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………...121-22 • CHAPTER 3 – ‘IMPERFECT PERFORMANCES’: FRAGMENTED MEANINGS AND MEANINGFUL FRAGMENTS IN HAMLET…….123-63 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...123-25 I- THE MEANING OF HAMLET: THE GREATEST QUESTION MARK………...125-35 a. Hamlet’s Criticism—Criticism’s Hamlet……………………………..125 b. Defamiliarisation Effect: The Fragmented Material Reality of Hamlet………………………………………………………………...128 c. ‘The Strangest Play Ever Written’: Estrangement as Core Feature of Hamlet……………………………………………….132 II- NEW HISTORICIST HAMLET: STEPHEN GREENBLATT’S HAMLET IN PURGATORY…………………………………………………………….135-46 a. A Protestant Playwright Haunted by the Spirit of His Catholic Father………………………………………………………………….135 b. ‘Heavy Hints’—Or Why the Ghost (Supposedly) Comes from Purgatory……………………………………………………………...138 c. The Medieval Emphasis on the State of the Soul at The Moment of Death……………………………………………...141 III- ‘A LIMITLESS ACCUMULATION OF THE IMPERFECT’: IN SEARCH OF HAMLET’S OBJECTIVE TRUTH CONTENT………………...146-60 a. Historicising Hamlet in the Twentieth Century: Lilian Winstanley and Carl Schmitt…………………………………..146 b. When Historicism Turns to Myth-Making: The Cases of Hamlet or Hecuba and Hamlet in Purgatory…………..150 c. ‘Dissonant Unity’: Gathering the Fragmented Meanings of Hamlet through Walter Benjamin’s Theory of Allegory…………..155 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………...160-63 SECTION III – THE MEDIATION OF PRESENCE: MAPPING OUT THE BIG OTHER IN SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA………………………………164-236 • INTRODUCTORY NOTE………………………………………………………..165-69 • CHAPTER 4 – ‘O MY DEMOCRATIC FRIENDS’: HENRY V OR THE PERFORMANCE OF PRESENCE……………………………170-216 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...170-72 I- CHORUS: THE GREAT PERFORMER OF PRESENCE………………………172-85 a. Historicist Henry V and the ‘Strictly Textual’ Alternative…………...172 b. Mediated Presence and Loss of Origin: Henry V’s Alienation Effect…………………………………………..177 c. Ghostly Semiosis: The Inexorable Drifting of Meaning Within the Text and Beyond………………………………………….180 II- THE FAILURE OF PRESENCE IN HENRY V AND BEYOND……………….185-203 a. The Chorus’ ‘Now’: Problematising Presence………………………..185 b. ‘Thought is Free’, or Shakespeare’s ‘Contradictory Approach to Language’……………………………………………………………..190 c. ‘Within the Girdle of these Walls’: An Imaginary Audience in an Imaginary Playhouse………………………………………………….195 d. ‘Play With Your Fancies’: Chorus as Historical Pervert……………..199 III- MAPPING OUT THE BIG OTHER: WHO IS BEING INTERPELLATED?………………………………………………………203-15 a. ‘A Largess Universal, Like the Sun’: The Chorus’ Cult of Personality…………………………………………………………….203 b. Subjectification and Interpellation: Henry V via Foucault and Althusser……………………………………………………………...206 c. Henry V, or the Aestheticisation of Différance……………………….209 d. Chorus as Interpellated Subject— Locating Lacan’s Big Other (or Not)…………………………………211 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………...215-16 • CHAPTER 5 – ‘I AM IN THE PICTURE’: THE DISPLACEMENT OF SUBJECTIVITY AND THE AESTHETICISATION OF THE BIG OTHER IN SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA……………………………………………………..217-36 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...217-19 I- UNCANNY PERSPECTIVES: SHAKESPEARE’S LACANIAN OPTICS……….219-28 a. ‘Looking Awry’: Žižek and Richard II……………………………….219 b. The ‘Pre-Existence of a Gaze’ in Hamlet: The Core of Alienation Underlying Subjectivity………………………………………………221 c. ‘Enter Three Witches’: A Gaze Lurking in the Margins of Theatricality…………………………………………………………..224 II- INTERPASSIVITY: ON THE DISPLACEMENT OF SUBJECTIVITY IN SHAKESPEARE AND IN THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY…………….228-36 a. The Interpassive Chorus of Henry V………………………………….228 b. Three Instances of Interpassivity in Contemporary Mass Entertainment…………………………………………………………230 c. ‘A Paralysed Object-Gaze’: The Objectification of the Viewer……...233 CONCLUSION – BEYOND RESISTANCE: POST-CRITICAL SURRENDER…………………..237-42 POST-SCRIPT……………………………………………………………………………….243 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………...244-61 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to my family for their support. Ma gratitude va bien au-delà des mots. Thanks to the Arts & Humanities Research Council
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