•  
  •  

Home > EARLYTHEATRE > Vol. 12 > Iss. 2 (2009)

 

Abstract

This paper performs a close reading of Jacobean tragedies, namely The Maiden’s Tragedy, The Revenger’s Tragedy, and The Duchess of Malfi, to highlight the ways in which, through revenge, corporeal fashioning in each play tests the body's relationship to the spirit. Where conventional Christian doctrine and Stoic philosophy traditionally privilege the soul's governance of the body, I argue that in these plays, the opposite is shown to be true: the body governs the spirit. I focus on the artificer figure, who in these plays reflects a new extreme in the form of the maniacal avenger, whose participation in corporeal fashioning is so perverse that he is beyond recuperation. What is more, Jacobean plays participate in a more extreme kind of bodily fashioning that moves beyond simple mutation to replacement entirely of human bodies, with either corpses, technologies, or automata. The medium of theatre itself demands this kind of replacement, as does the genre of revenge to anticipate Cartesian mechanistic dualism. Because the material paradoxically becomes the centre of attention, it proves to be constitutive of selfhood, perverting Christian, Senecan, and Cartesian notions of selfhood, which reside in the soul and mind respectively.

Author Biography

Sheetal Lodhia <1sl16@queensu.ca> is a recent doctoral graduate from Queen's University. This article is adapted from her thesis, 'Material Self-Fashioning and the Renaissance Culture of Improvement', which she is currently revising for publication. Her focus is on the modified body as it appears in various forms, from the grisly details of mutilation, to the glorious aspects of medical miracle. When she is not working on The Black Leg, Spenser, or Elizabeth I, she can be seen trying to perfect her moonwalk.


Download

Share

COinS