In Words and Deeds: The Spectacle of Incest in English Renaissance TragedyRodopi, 2002 - 296 pages Departing from earlier studies which regarded incest as a literary topos or dramatic metaphor foregrounding political, social, or legal issues, Words and Deeds: The Spectacle of Incest in English Renaissance Tragedy argues that the presence of incest on the Renaissance stage is a strategy for the enactment of the spectator's tragic experience. Incest is explored neither as a sin nor as a crime, but as an "unspeakable" experience filtered through dramatic words and deeds. The incitement of desire, visual pleasure, and unconscious fantasy, as well as traumatic rejection, pain, and horror, are all aspects of this paradoxical and uncanny experience. Aristotelian theory of tragedy, Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Michel Foucault's notions of the deployment of sexuality and alliance, concur in the analysis of plays where incest is a central or a secondary motif - Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Beaumont and Fletcher's Cupid's Revenge, Webster's The Duchess of Malfi - and others where incest is an effect of language and mise-en-scène - Sackville and Norton's Gorboduc, Shakespeare's King Lear. The variety of topics and the combination of critical perspectives makes In Words and Deeds an attractive book for students and teachers of Renaissance drama, as well as for those with a special interest in psychoanalytic and other new theoretical approaches to the literary text. |
From inside the book
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Page 3
... symbolic archetype , and which may endeavour to prove literature's capacity for addressing universal aspects of human pathologies or behaviour . This study pursues a cri- tique of such assumptions by maintaining that incest is primarily ...
... symbolic archetype , and which may endeavour to prove literature's capacity for addressing universal aspects of human pathologies or behaviour . This study pursues a cri- tique of such assumptions by maintaining that incest is primarily ...
Page 16
... symbolic father to his nation insofar as he is his father's son . Thus , the repre- sentation of royal power as a parent - child incestuous relationship becomes an ambivalent image , since it may be employed in support of a discourse of ...
... symbolic father to his nation insofar as he is his father's son . Thus , the repre- sentation of royal power as a parent - child incestuous relationship becomes an ambivalent image , since it may be employed in support of a discourse of ...
Page 22
... symbolic order , and which manifests itself as traumatic in its encounter with the Real.43 Incest , for its inevitable connection with repression and unconscious desire , Lacan's " unspoken " or " unsaid ” – necessarily inscribes itself ...
... symbolic order , and which manifests itself as traumatic in its encounter with the Real.43 Incest , for its inevitable connection with repression and unconscious desire , Lacan's " unspoken " or " unsaid ” – necessarily inscribes itself ...
Page 24
... Symbolic Order ( society as semiotic mechanism ) , the histori- cal problematization of the macrodynamics and the psycho- analytical account of the microdynamics of the subject cannot be separated and are always two sides of the same ...
... Symbolic Order ( society as semiotic mechanism ) , the histori- cal problematization of the macrodynamics and the psycho- analytical account of the microdynamics of the subject cannot be separated and are always two sides of the same ...
Page 27
... symbolic and emblematic modes , the psychoanalytic concepts of the primal scene , the fort / da , the uncanny , and abjection , constitute the keys to account for the dis- play of incest and its ambivalent reception , caught up between ...
... symbolic and emblematic modes , the psychoanalytic concepts of the primal scene , the fort / da , the uncanny , and abjection , constitute the keys to account for the dis- play of incest and its ambivalent reception , caught up between ...
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Common terms and phrases
anagnorisis analysis Annabella Aristotelian audience Bacha becomes blood body Boehrer brother catharsis cause character conception conflict constitutes Cordelia critical Cupid's Revenge daughter death demand difference discourse dramatic Duchess of Malfi Duke early modern effect Elizabethan emblem emblematic emotional emphasis added English Renaissance ethos experience fantasy father Ferdinand Ferrex Flamineo Foucault Freud Giovanni Gorboduc Hamlet heart Hippolito Ibid identity incest incestuous desire Jacques Lacan King Lear kinship Lacan language Lear's Leucippus literary Literature Livia Marcello marriage maternal meaning mimesis mise-en-scène moral mother motif mythos narrative object Oedipus Oedipus the King opsis play play's pleasure plot poetics political psychoanalytic Renaissance drama representation repression Revenger's Tragedy ritual role scene sense sexuality Shakespeare sister social spectacle spectator spectator's stage structure symbolic order teleology theatrical theory Thierry and Theodoret tion Tis Pity tragic trans uncanny unconscious Videna Vindice Vindice's Whore Women Beware Women words
Popular passages
Page 154 - Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all ? Thou 'It come no more, Never, never, never, never, never ! Pray you, undo this button : thank you, sir. Do you see this ? Look on her, look, her lips, Look there, look there ! [Dies.
Page 8 - The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that -particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.
Page 141 - The barbarous Scythian, Or he that makes his generation messes To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and reliev'd As thou, my sometime daughter.
Page 141 - Let it be so! thy truth then be thy dower! For, by the sacred radiance of the sun, The mysteries of Hecate and the night; By all the operation of the orbs From whom we do exist and cease to be...
Page 137 - Good my lord, You have begot me, bred me, lov'd me : I .Return those duties back as are right fit, Obey you, love you, and most honour you. Why have my sisters husbands if they say They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed, That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry Half my love with him, half my care and duty : Sure I shall never marry like my sisters, To love my father all.
Page 151 - I'll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness; so we'll live, // And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too, Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out; And...
Page 128 - It did always seem so to us : but now, in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the dukes he values most ; for equalities are so weighed, that curiosity in neither can make choice of cither's moiety.
Page 130 - Tell me, my daughters (Since now we will divest us both of rule, Interest of territory, cares of state), Which of you shall we say doth love us most? That we our largest bounty may extend Where nature doth with merit challenge.
Page 125 - ... the mother herself, the beloved one who is chosen after her pattern, and lastly the Mother Earth who receives him once more.