Tragedies of the Mind: Emotion, Cognition, and Motivation in Four Early Modern Tragedies by Hisham Al Khatib A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario © 2020 Hisham Al Khatib Abstract This dissertation sets early modern tragedy in dialogue with current research in cognitive psychology in order to study the cognition and behavior of four tragic heroes of the greatest early modern tragedies: William Shakespeare’s Othello and Titus Andronicus, Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, and Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy. These plays have been selected as objects of analysis because, as especially revealing examples of what I am calling tragedies of the mind, they dramatize fundamental characteristics and biases of human cognitive functioning in especially acute form. In each play, the playwright’s interest in highlighting a protagonist’s catastrophic errors in judgment leads to especially subtle and penetrating anatomizations of the interplay between emotion and cognition, motivation and decision-making, desire and action. More than most other plays of the period, these plays are preoccupied with exploring not just the mental and emotional states of the protagonists in the process of their downfall, but also with understanding the very nature of these operations. As I argue, the relation between emotion and cognition is perhaps the most important issue in the study of motivation and decision-making in early modern tragedy because a careful analysis of pertinent works by Shakespeare, Kyd, and Marlowe reveals that these tragedians produced dramatizations of human motivation and action that seem intuitively to anticipate a great deal about contemporary insights and approaches within cognitive psychology. Since an outstanding feature of these early modern tragedies is their preoccupation with human nature—that is, with the fundamental moral and intellectual capacities of the human being—a referential framework drawn from cognitive psychology offers a potentially illuminating way of further clarifying the dramatized thought and behaviors of these tragic heroes. Such an ii approach to the study of literary personhood, I contend, holds the promise of revealing new insights into the drives and motivations of early modern protagonists. iii Acknowledgements My initial ideas for this dissertation started when I was doing my master’s degree in Lebanon. I was a graduate student in the English Department at the American University of Beirut, and I became interested in early modern tragedy after I had taken a course on tragedy with Dr. David Currell. David respected my passion and genuinely supported my interest in interdisciplinary studies that conjoin science and literature. For the two productive years at this unique university for graduate study, I owe a debt of gratitude to him and the administrative staff. The presence of a leading cognitive literary scientist at Carleton University was a major advantage for a humanities person like me who wanted to expand knowledge on bridging science and literature. Professor Donald Beecher made time for a constructive critique of my initial chapters and gave me important leads. My intellectual debt to his work is enormous; he engaged me in critical discussions on various occasions and kept me from giving up at a critical juncture. I was also able to benefit from discussions with and comments made by Dr. Andrew Wallace. Andrew’s challenging questions and critical readings have forced me to think harder and reassess my thoughts; his insights motivated me to explore and develop my skills and shaped me into a researcher, and for that I am so grateful. I am extraordinarily grateful to my supervisor Dr. Brian Johnson who has been a wonderfully generous mentor, not only in this project, but also from the beginning of my PhD program, responding reliably and rapidly to every question, every chapter draft, and every one of my email questions. Brian has provided substantive feedback on my work from literary and psychological perspectives; he always looked iv further than I could think, and he has always been professional, friendly, and approachable. Among those who are less connected with my project, but especially important to my success in the department, I would like to highlight Dr. Siobhain Bly Calkin, Dr. Robin Norris, and Dr. Julie Murray. Each of these three wonderful professors has taught me something that helped me develop myself academically and professionally. To all of them I am most grateful. Finally, to my family, partner, and friends go not only my thanks for their support and patience during my writing marathons, but also my love. v Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction……………………………………………………….….….…1 1.1 Emotions and Cognition: Then and Now……………………………….….......4 1.2 The Tragic Sense of Life versus Tragedy of Fate…………………….…….....11 1.3 Methodology: A Cognitive Psychological Approach to Early Modern Tragedy..............................................................................................................22 1.4 Tragic Inclination: The Role of Emotion in Cognition and Evaluative Judgement……………………………………………………………………..34 1.5 Psychoanalytic Approaches versus Cognitive Psychological Approaches…...48 1.6 Unfolding of the Plot……………………………………………………….…51 Chapter Two: Othello: When Jealousy Gains Control……….…………………..………54 2.1 Othello’s Emotion-Provoked Imagination……………………………….…...64 2.2 Othello’s Jealousy: Experienced, Expressed, but Unregulated………….……76 2.3 Othello’s Psychological Layering of Jealousy……………………….……….90 Chapter Three: Desire: Faustus’s Eighth Deadly Sin and the Tragic Properties of an Imaginative Mind……………………………………………………………………….107 3.1 Faustus’s Intrinsic and Extrinsic Desires……………………………………116 3.2 Desires Evoke Cognitive Imagination and Delusion………………………..128 3.3 Doctor Faustus: From Morality Play to Psychological Tragedy……………147 Chapter Four: The Spanish Tragedy and the Predilection for Revenge………………...154 4.1 Revenge as a Psychological Mechanism………………………………….…159 4.2 Hieronimo’s Formation of Revenge Thoughts………………………………162 4.3 Hieronimo’s Self-Deliberation before Perpetrating the Deeds…………..….168 4.4 Hieronimo’s Execution of Revenge Acts…………………………………….185 4.5 Hieronimo’s Suicidal Act……………………………………………………190 4.6 Hieronimo’s Exaggerated Revenge Acts………………………………….…193 Chapter Five: Titus’s Aggression and the Sequence of Violent Actions and Events Leading to His Downfall………………………………………………………….…….198 5.1 Forms of Aggression: Impulsive and Cognitive………………………….….204 5.2 Mutius’s Killing Scene and Titus’s Impulsive Aggression………………….208 5.3 Titus’s Impulsive Aggression Supported by His Experiential Violence…….217 5.4 Titus’s Instrumental Aggression against Tamora’s Two Sons………………224 5.5 Mixed Motives and Multiple Deaths: Lavinia’s and Titus’s………………...229 5.6 Conclusion……………………………………………………………...……237 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...241 Bibliography………………….…………………………………………………….......246 1 CHAPTER ONE Introduction In Aristotle’s classic formulation of tragedy as catharsis, downfall and death are closely linked to error. The tragic hero is “the sort of man who is not of outstanding virtue and judgment and who comes upon disaster not through wickedness or depravity but because of some mistake.”1 As tragedy’s audience, therefore, we feel pity and fear for ourselves as much as for the hero, for we are as fallible and vulnerable as they.2 In the wake of Aristotle’s characterization of tragedy as a genre that posits emotional identification between spectator and hero, literary critics have continued to theorize the genre’s interest in representing emotions and psychology, paying particular attention to the way tragedy dwells on the suffering and destruction of the protagonist during catastrophic events or situations. Because “writers of Tragedy treated Men in their Plays 1 Aristotle, John Baxter, and Atherton, Aristotle’s Poetics: Translated and with a Commentary by George Whalley, (Montreal: MQUP, 1997), 95. 2 Amélie Oksenberg Rorty argues that the classical notion of catharsis can be understood from different perspectives because catharsis “combines several ideas: it is a medical term, referring to a therapeutic cleansing or purgation; it is a religious term, referring to a purification achieved by the formal and ritualized, bounded expression of powerful and often dangerous emotions; it is a cognitive term, referring to an intellectual resolution or clarification that involves directing emotions to their appropriate intentional objects.” She believes that all these forms of catharsis are meant to help bring about the right operation of a “well-balanced soul.” No matter how many scholars join the debate over whether tragic catharsis is “expressed as a resolution of the incidents of the plot or whether it is expressed in the psychology of the audience,” Rorty claims that the debate can be set aside insofar as the psychological catharsis of the audience prevails “because of the catharsis of the dramatic action.” In Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1992), 14. 2 as they are dealt with in the World, by making Virtue sometimes happy and sometimes miserable,”3 the genre has seemed remarkably suited to exploring the inclinations of the human mind in different emotional states, from misery to felicity. A special attitude toward cognition, emotions, and inordinate passions is evident