This essay argues that the relationship between the body and figurative language is central to Ben Jonson's epideictic poetry. In his poetry of praise, Jonson attempts to anchor a disembodied speaking voice in the bodies of those to whom his poetry is addressed. Generated by the bodies of others, Jonson's figurative language asserts and even depends for its success upon the speaker's incorporeality. Yet, I will argue, in Jonson's poetry in general and his epideictic poetry in particular, the body is not just the object of discourse but also the subject of discourse; the interplay between the two shapes Jonson's figurative language even in the case of a poem, such as epigram CXXV, “To Sir William Uvedale,” that seems to have very little to do with the body. The epigram is neither Petrarchan love poem, satire, nor an indulgence in the grotesque. Nonetheless, it is structured by Jonson's attempt to deny the male body as the ground of its figurative language, a denial that is itself rooted in bodily metaphors. The failure of the attempted denial reveals at once the figurative, back-constructed nature of the ostensibly literal object of the poem, Uvedale's body, and the very embodied nature of the supposedly disembodied, transcendental speaker.
{"title":"The Body and Figurative Language in Ben Jonson's Epigram CXXV, “To Sir William Uvedale”","authors":"Mathew R. Martin","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2022.0328","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2022.0328","url":null,"abstract":"This essay argues that the relationship between the body and figurative language is central to Ben Jonson's epideictic poetry. In his poetry of praise, Jonson attempts to anchor a disembodied speaking voice in the bodies of those to whom his poetry is addressed. Generated by the bodies of others, Jonson's figurative language asserts and even depends for its success upon the speaker's incorporeality. Yet, I will argue, in Jonson's poetry in general and his epideictic poetry in particular, the body is not just the object of discourse but also the subject of discourse; the interplay between the two shapes Jonson's figurative language even in the case of a poem, such as epigram CXXV, “To Sir William Uvedale,” that seems to have very little to do with the body. The epigram is neither Petrarchan love poem, satire, nor an indulgence in the grotesque. Nonetheless, it is structured by Jonson's attempt to deny the male body as the ground of its figurative language, a denial that is itself rooted in bodily metaphors. The failure of the attempted denial reveals at once the figurative, back-constructed nature of the ostensibly literal object of the poem, Uvedale's body, and the very embodied nature of the supposedly disembodied, transcendental speaker.","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86475654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
James I's accession to the English throne in 1603 was marked by the rising prominence of the Bedchamber as a powerful and semi-autonomous institution that was manned by an entourage of royal advisors and close personal associates who took care not just of the king's physical needs and private ablutions but also played a vital role in government and policy matters. Based on a prototype of the king's former integrated Scottish household this new ceremonial space became the crux around which the private and political life of the monarch was centered. Yet James' decision to reserve bedchamber positions solely for his Scottish countrymen caused deep disquiet and jealousy among the English political elite. This essay attempts to read the bedchamber setting in Volpone (notwithstanding its Venetian locale and characters) as a darkly humorous parody of the reorganized Scots-centric Jacobean Bedchamber, especially in its potential to function as a privileged site of power, homoerotic patronage, and material profit for a select few. Coming within a year of the composition of the infamous anti-Scots comedy Eastward Ho and written immediately in the aftermath of the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, Volpone (1606) is the closest albeit indirect reflection of the political disgruntlement and cultural anxiety prevailing in England in the first few years of James' reign.
{"title":"Scottish Designs: Bedchamber Politics in Volpone","authors":"Sonia Sahoo","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2022.0325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2022.0325","url":null,"abstract":"James I's accession to the English throne in 1603 was marked by the rising prominence of the Bedchamber as a powerful and semi-autonomous institution that was manned by an entourage of royal advisors and close personal associates who took care not just of the king's physical needs and private ablutions but also played a vital role in government and policy matters. Based on a prototype of the king's former integrated Scottish household this new ceremonial space became the crux around which the private and political life of the monarch was centered. Yet James' decision to reserve bedchamber positions solely for his Scottish countrymen caused deep disquiet and jealousy among the English political elite. This essay attempts to read the bedchamber setting in Volpone (notwithstanding its Venetian locale and characters) as a darkly humorous parody of the reorganized Scots-centric Jacobean Bedchamber, especially in its potential to function as a privileged site of power, homoerotic patronage, and material profit for a select few. Coming within a year of the composition of the infamous anti-Scots comedy Eastward Ho and written immediately in the aftermath of the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, Volpone (1606) is the closest albeit indirect reflection of the political disgruntlement and cultural anxiety prevailing in England in the first few years of James' reign.","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89409944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the relationship between Volpone and Mosca as a master-servant bond grounded on roleplaying and theatricality. I argue that Mosca’s growing importance as an actor within Volpone’s theatrical schemes for wealth acquisition lead Mosca to envision detachment from his master and to gain an independent self. Mosca’s independence is legally recognized by the Venetian authorities only for a moment in the final act before he is discovered and punished. Notwithstanding its conservative ending, the play reveals paths of advancement for the parasite through deceit and theatricality. In addition, Mosca’s soliloquies reveal an introspective mind that delights in his role of parasite. I relate this introspection to a form of subjectivity arising from the precarious employment of household servants in early modern London, which prompted their adaptation to a variety of roles. My argument examines early modern texts that put forth an ideology of service and that discuss duplicity and the parasite. I specifically delve into the figure of the parasite in Gervase Markham’s A health to the gentlemanly profession of seruingmen and in Jonson’s Discoveries as well as into the the concept of “eye-service” and parasitical service in William Gouge’s Of Domesticall Duties to draw connections between the anxiety of social mobility found in these texts and the rise of Mosca in Jonson’s play. Through Mosca’s rise and fall in the play, Jonson, I argue, shows the possibilities but also the limits of social mobility for servants in the transitional period of early-seventeenth-century London.
{"title":"The Independent Parasite: Mosca’s Theatrical Service in Volpone","authors":"Emiliano Gutiérrez-Popoca","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2022.0327","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2022.0327","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the relationship between Volpone and Mosca as a master-servant bond grounded on roleplaying and theatricality. I argue that Mosca’s growing importance as an actor within Volpone’s theatrical schemes for wealth acquisition lead Mosca to envision detachment from his master and to gain an independent self. Mosca’s independence is legally recognized by the Venetian authorities only for a moment in the final act before he is discovered and punished. Notwithstanding its conservative ending, the play reveals paths of advancement for the parasite through deceit and theatricality. In addition, Mosca’s soliloquies reveal an introspective mind that delights in his role of parasite. I relate this introspection to a form of subjectivity arising from the precarious employment of household servants in early modern London, which prompted their adaptation to a variety of roles. My argument examines early modern texts that put forth an ideology of service and that discuss duplicity and the parasite. I specifically delve into the figure of the parasite in Gervase Markham’s A health to the gentlemanly profession of seruingmen and in Jonson’s Discoveries as well as into the the concept of “eye-service” and parasitical service in William Gouge’s Of Domesticall Duties to draw connections between the anxiety of social mobility found in these texts and the rise of Mosca in Jonson’s play. Through Mosca’s rise and fall in the play, Jonson, I argue, shows the possibilities but also the limits of social mobility for servants in the transitional period of early-seventeenth-century London.","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78053069","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Heather James, Ovid and the Liberty of Speech in Shakespeare's England","authors":"D. Moss","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2022.0331","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2022.0331","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78498981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article discusses Philip Massinger’s The Maid of Honour, showing how this tragicomedy set in Italy is resonant of stories, ideas, theories and characters from the Italian literary and cultural tradition. On the one hand, I will shed light on Massinger’s use of an Italian ambience, concentrating on the choice of Palermo and Siena as a setting. The pseudo-historic setting of the play may be seen as a pretext to dramatize the author’s moral needs and convey a form of political ideology, which reflects the social tensions and the political concerns of the period. On the other hand, I will discuss the different forms of legacy from the Italian world, focusing on the cultural forces, and the moral and ideological motivations behind the playwright’s choice of the genre of his play, the changes concerning plot, setting and the characters’ names in the original Italian text on which the tragicomedy is based. Moreover, this tragicomedy, characterized by a profound didactic and moral intent, also seems to combine some elements of the late 16th century commedia grave, mainly in the presence of an exemplary female protagonist, Camiola, who embodies the providential spirit of the Counter-Reformist attitudes in vogue in the period. Finally, I will examine the way an image of Italy is portrayed through language, analyzing the very marginal occurrence of the Italian language and the presence of Latin words and tags.
{"title":"Italy in Philip Massinger’s The Maid of Honour","authors":"C. Paravano","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2022.0329","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2022.0329","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses Philip Massinger’s The Maid of Honour, showing how this tragicomedy set in Italy is resonant of stories, ideas, theories and characters from the Italian literary and cultural tradition. On the one hand, I will shed light on Massinger’s use of an Italian ambience, concentrating on the choice of Palermo and Siena as a setting. The pseudo-historic setting of the play may be seen as a pretext to dramatize the author’s moral needs and convey a form of political ideology, which reflects the social tensions and the political concerns of the period. On the other hand, I will discuss the different forms of legacy from the Italian world, focusing on the cultural forces, and the moral and ideological motivations behind the playwright’s choice of the genre of his play, the changes concerning plot, setting and the characters’ names in the original Italian text on which the tragicomedy is based. Moreover, this tragicomedy, characterized by a profound didactic and moral intent, also seems to combine some elements of the late 16th century commedia grave, mainly in the presence of an exemplary female protagonist, Camiola, who embodies the providential spirit of the Counter-Reformist attitudes in vogue in the period. Finally, I will examine the way an image of Italy is portrayed through language, analyzing the very marginal occurrence of the Italian language and the presence of Latin words and tags.","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83478638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In terms of its dramatic effectiveness, its technique of classical citation, and its use of non-normative male roles as performers, the show presented by Nano, Androgyno and Castrone in Volpone 1.2 falls outside the traditions of performance at the Globe theatre where the play was first performed. Though its affinities are closer to the drama of the boy companies, it is here argued that Jonson most likely introduced the episode when preparing the play for publication in print. The article further develops this argument for a cultural divide within the text as a means to describe the play published in 1607 as an exercise in textual anamorphosis.
{"title":"Jonson’s University Show","authors":"J. Jowett","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2022.0326","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2022.0326","url":null,"abstract":"In terms of its dramatic effectiveness, its technique of classical citation, and its use of non-normative male roles as performers, the show presented by Nano, Androgyno and Castrone in Volpone 1.2 falls outside the traditions of performance at the Globe theatre where the play was first performed. Though its affinities are closer to the drama of the boy companies, it is here argued that Jonson most likely introduced the episode when preparing the play for publication in print. The article further develops this argument for a cultural divide within the text as a means to describe the play published in 1607 as an exercise in textual anamorphosis.","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79004430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Thomas L. Martin and Duke Pesta, The Renaissance and the Postmodern: A Study in Comparative Critical Values","authors":"David V. Urban","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2021.0319","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2021.0319","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87660616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Although many scholars have denigrated Troilus and Cressida, the Folio version of the play—with a prologue—offers a more tractable, even winsome play than does the quarto version. As a buffer between the real world of an audience and the imagined world of a play, the prologue adjusts the expectations of an audience, highlighting at once its own potency and the interpretive potential of this textual difference between quarto and Folio. This Prologue conveys an appeal neither obsequious nor arrogant—as do its respective models in John Marston's Antonio and Mellida and Ben Jonson's Poetaster—but rhetorically sinuous and eminently tactful, at once calming the war of the theaters and previewing the subtle tonal shifts in the play that follows it. In Poetaster, Jonson presents “An armed Prologue,” which has often been mentioned as a precursor to Shakespeare's Troilus Prologue, but I argue that its surface similarities only highlight its differences in goals, methods, and most importantly tone. And by contrast with the epilogue in Antonio and Mellida, the Troilus Prologue presents a more subtly nuanced attempt to win the favor of an audience not wholly by self-effacement but by complex honesty and mimetic rhetoric, counterbalanced to anticipate the perplexing world of Shakespeare's play.
{"title":"Troilus and Cressida's Folio Prologue in the Poets’ War: Shakespeare, Jonson, Marston","authors":"Joshua R. Held","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2021.0314","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2021.0314","url":null,"abstract":"Although many scholars have denigrated Troilus and Cressida, the Folio version of the play—with a prologue—offers a more tractable, even winsome play than does the quarto version. As a buffer between the real world of an audience and the imagined world of a play, the prologue adjusts the expectations of an audience, highlighting at once its own potency and the interpretive potential of this textual difference between quarto and Folio. This Prologue conveys an appeal neither obsequious nor arrogant—as do its respective models in John Marston's Antonio and Mellida and Ben Jonson's Poetaster—but rhetorically sinuous and eminently tactful, at once calming the war of the theaters and previewing the subtle tonal shifts in the play that follows it. In Poetaster, Jonson presents “An armed Prologue,” which has often been mentioned as a precursor to Shakespeare's Troilus Prologue, but I argue that its surface similarities only highlight its differences in goals, methods, and most importantly tone. And by contrast with the epilogue in Antonio and Mellida, the Troilus Prologue presents a more subtly nuanced attempt to win the favor of an audience not wholly by self-effacement but by complex honesty and mimetic rhetoric, counterbalanced to anticipate the perplexing world of Shakespeare's play.","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91328138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article discusses Ben Jonson's 1609 play Epicene; or, The Silent Woman, with a particular focus on Morose's excessive solitude and aversion to noise. The article begins by demonstrating how Epicene ostensibly relies on early modern discourses of female speech. The ideal woman of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century conduct literature was silent, a quality inseparable from the associated virtues of chastity and modesty. Morose takes this imperative to its extreme in his search for a bride of “thrifty speech,” who “spends but six words a day” (1.2.28-9). In contrast, excessive female speech is associated with women's proverbial corporeal leakiness, “hermaphroditic” or “epicene” gender, and uncontrolled sexual desire. Above all, the play insists that noisy, desiring, masculine women are a product of the emergent consumer culture located in the city. This raises a contradiction: are women all inherently prone to noisiness, or does female noisiness trouble the boundaries of gender? If women are naturally noisy, what is it about early modern London that, according to the play, exacerbates this? How we understand the nature of noise has profound implications for our reception of Morose. Rather than defining Morose solely in terms of his apparent agoraphobia and miserly character, as earlier criticism tended to do, attention to the ways in which both Morose and Epicene attempt to construct intolerable noise as an innate feature of urban womanhood can illuminate the structure of social abjection at work in policing the boundaries of masculinity and male communities.
{"title":"“O'erwhelmed with noise”: Abject Female Speech in Epicene; or, The Silent Woman","authors":"L. Swift","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2021.0313","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2021.0313","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses Ben Jonson's 1609 play Epicene; or, The Silent Woman, with a particular focus on Morose's excessive solitude and aversion to noise. The article begins by demonstrating how Epicene ostensibly relies on early modern discourses of female speech. The ideal woman of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century conduct literature was silent, a quality inseparable from the associated virtues of chastity and modesty. Morose takes this imperative to its extreme in his search for a bride of “thrifty speech,” who “spends but six words a day” (1.2.28-9). In contrast, excessive female speech is associated with women's proverbial corporeal leakiness, “hermaphroditic” or “epicene” gender, and uncontrolled sexual desire. Above all, the play insists that noisy, desiring, masculine women are a product of the emergent consumer culture located in the city. This raises a contradiction: are women all inherently prone to noisiness, or does female noisiness trouble the boundaries of gender? If women are naturally noisy, what is it about early modern London that, according to the play, exacerbates this? How we understand the nature of noise has profound implications for our reception of Morose. Rather than defining Morose solely in terms of his apparent agoraphobia and miserly character, as earlier criticism tended to do, attention to the ways in which both Morose and Epicene attempt to construct intolerable noise as an innate feature of urban womanhood can illuminate the structure of social abjection at work in policing the boundaries of masculinity and male communities.","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87207927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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