Abstract:This article considers how Shakespeare’s Henry V draws upon the language of double-entry accounting to critique elitist protocols governing early modern historiographies. Rather than a merely reductive numerical procedure, double entry relied upon surprisingly literary functions—including personification—to yield a factual system lending equal legitimacy to real and fictional proper names. Beginning with an analysis of Henry V’s prologue and concluding with Henry’s tally of the dead at Agincourt, I argue that the play invokes double entry as a metaphor for theatrical representation to help underwrite its use of fictional characters and partially recoup the erasure of lower-class names from history.
{"title":"Shakespeare’s Henry V and the Ciphers of History","authors":"W. Caldwell","doi":"10.1353/sel.2022.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sel.2022.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article considers how Shakespeare’s Henry V draws upon the language of double-entry accounting to critique elitist protocols governing early modern historiographies. Rather than a merely reductive numerical procedure, double entry relied upon surprisingly literary functions—including personification—to yield a factual system lending equal legitimacy to real and fictional proper names. Beginning with an analysis of Henry V’s prologue and concluding with Henry’s tally of the dead at Agincourt, I argue that the play invokes double entry as a metaphor for theatrical representation to help underwrite its use of fictional characters and partially recoup the erasure of lower-class names from history.","PeriodicalId":45835,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 1500-1900","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79470149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:When Hamlet assesses dumb shows as “inexplicable,” he means his judgment to be a negative one. This article will not dispute his assessment that this odd early modern theatrical device would have confused playgoers. But it will dispute his verdict’s negative tenor by arguing that the dumb show’s inexplicability suggests that early modern theater could at times be enjoyed even when, or even because, it was not understood. The dumb show’s resistance to easy interpretation suggests the presence and power of a distinctive enigmatic theatricality, one capable of eliciting some of the more peculiar pleasures available to early modern playgoers.
{"title":"Hamlet’s “Inexplicable Dumb-Shows” and the Pleasures of Enigma","authors":"Micah West","doi":"10.1353/sel.2022.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sel.2022.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:When Hamlet assesses dumb shows as “inexplicable,” he means his judgment to be a negative one. This article will not dispute his assessment that this odd early modern theatrical device would have confused playgoers. But it will dispute his verdict’s negative tenor by arguing that the dumb show’s inexplicability suggests that early modern theater could at times be enjoyed even when, or even because, it was not understood. The dumb show’s resistance to easy interpretation suggests the presence and power of a distinctive enigmatic theatricality, one capable of eliciting some of the more peculiar pleasures available to early modern playgoers.","PeriodicalId":45835,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 1500-1900","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88192065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Scholars often struggle to account for the many corporeal impairments in Julius Caesar. This article considers them constitutive to the play’s tragic poetics. As the falls of its great men prove inextricable from the falls, or failures, of their imbricated bodies and minds, unpitied psychosomatic downturn both precipitates and becomes a microcosm of its tragic counterpart. Attending to this convergence with the help of disability theory shines new light on Julius Caesar’s circular unity, the conspirators’ plot, and the quarrel scene. More importantly, it also situates the tragedy as a primer to the mutable interplay between pity and disability that subtends Shakespeare’s mature tragic praxis.
{"title":"Pity, Singular Disability, and the Makings of Shakespearean Tragedy in Julius Caesar","authors":"Pasquale S. Toscano","doi":"10.1353/sel.2022.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sel.2022.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Scholars often struggle to account for the many corporeal impairments in Julius Caesar. This article considers them constitutive to the play’s tragic poetics. As the falls of its great men prove inextricable from the falls, or failures, of their imbricated bodies and minds, unpitied psychosomatic downturn both precipitates and becomes a microcosm of its tragic counterpart. Attending to this convergence with the help of disability theory shines new light on Julius Caesar’s circular unity, the conspirators’ plot, and the quarrel scene. More importantly, it also situates the tragedy as a primer to the mutable interplay between pity and disability that subtends Shakespeare’s mature tragic praxis.","PeriodicalId":45835,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 1500-1900","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88888994","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article places Richard II at the historical conjuncture of feudal dissolution and the ecological transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age. I suggest that Richard II exemplifies a particular genre of ecological Trauerspiel in its Benjaminian view of history, tragedy, and time. Although Richard Halpern and Zenon Luis-Martinez have made the case for reading Richard II as Trauerspiel, I argue that the play’s dual sense of history and tragedy is ultimately indebted to the political and ecological terrain—the literal earth—on which it is enacted.
{"title":"“The Bay Trees … Are All Withered”: Ecological Trauerspiel in Richard II","authors":"Natalie Suzelis","doi":"10.1353/sel.2022.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sel.2022.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article places Richard II at the historical conjuncture of feudal dissolution and the ecological transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age. I suggest that Richard II exemplifies a particular genre of ecological Trauerspiel in its Benjaminian view of history, tragedy, and time. Although Richard Halpern and Zenon Luis-Martinez have made the case for reading Richard II as Trauerspiel, I argue that the play’s dual sense of history and tragedy is ultimately indebted to the political and ecological terrain—the literal earth—on which it is enacted.","PeriodicalId":45835,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 1500-1900","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85803684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:In All’s Well That Ends Well, Helen announces a possible pregnancy: it proliferates interpretations and cannot be confirmed or disproven. Recognizing Helen’s pregnancy as possible makes retroactively evident the play’s fracturing patriarchal power structure, impotent model of cultural reproduction, and recursive temporality. Helen and Bertram face an excess of parental figures, biological and surrogate, who trouble familial roles and interrupt the patrilineal inheritance they advocate. Lineal descent and linear time intertwine and preclude them from copying their elders or inaugurating a new generation to produce stability. Shakespeare dangles biological reproduction as a panacea but permanently defers it.
{"title":"Possible Pregnancy and All’s Well’s Uncertain Ends","authors":"B. Packard","doi":"10.1353/sel.2022.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sel.2022.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In All’s Well That Ends Well, Helen announces a possible pregnancy: it proliferates interpretations and cannot be confirmed or disproven. Recognizing Helen’s pregnancy as possible makes retroactively evident the play’s fracturing patriarchal power structure, impotent model of cultural reproduction, and recursive temporality. Helen and Bertram face an excess of parental figures, biological and surrogate, who trouble familial roles and interrupt the patrilineal inheritance they advocate. Lineal descent and linear time intertwine and preclude them from copying their elders or inaugurating a new generation to produce stability. Shakespeare dangles biological reproduction as a panacea but permanently defers it.","PeriodicalId":45835,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 1500-1900","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74341135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:An assessment of recent scholarly work treating the literature of Tudor and Stuart Drama and some general observations on the state of the profession. A full bibliography and price list of works received by SEL for consideration follow.
{"title":"Recent Studies in Tudor and Stuart Drama","authors":"William N. West","doi":"10.1353/sel.2022.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sel.2022.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:An assessment of recent scholarly work treating the literature of Tudor and Stuart Drama and some general observations on the state of the profession. A full bibliography and price list of works received by SEL for consideration follow.","PeriodicalId":45835,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 1500-1900","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82078065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article explores how King Lear’s representation of suffering reveals the limits of Christian and Stoic approaches to suffering. Patience, a concept that was etymologically and conceptually related to suffering, is the meeting point between Christianity and the Stoic tradition in King Lear. The play ultimately reveals that both Christian and Stoic varieties of patience are limited in their capacity to console, and that compassion is a more reliable ethical alternative. By treating patience as the vehicle of King Lear’s skepticism, this article situates the play’s engagement with suffering in terms of the broader history of Christianity’s assimilation of classical concepts.
{"title":"Christian and Stoic Patience in King Lear","authors":"Deni Kasa","doi":"10.1353/sel.2022.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sel.2022.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article explores how King Lear’s representation of suffering reveals the limits of Christian and Stoic approaches to suffering. Patience, a concept that was etymologically and conceptually related to suffering, is the meeting point between Christianity and the Stoic tradition in King Lear. The play ultimately reveals that both Christian and Stoic varieties of patience are limited in their capacity to console, and that compassion is a more reliable ethical alternative. By treating patience as the vehicle of King Lear’s skepticism, this article situates the play’s engagement with suffering in terms of the broader history of Christianity’s assimilation of classical concepts.","PeriodicalId":45835,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 1500-1900","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79510632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article explores Thomas Traherne's attraction to collaborative and continuously unfolding lyric projects. I argue that Traherne sees unfinished manuscripts as a reflection of the infinite capacity of a human soul, which is itself the signature of a divinity and lovability that does not rely on successful habituation into a life of virtuous conduct. This article was supported by a fellowship from the University of Iowa to consult Traherne's autograph manuscripts at the Bodleian and British Libraries.
{"title":"Love, Capacity, and Traherne's Idea of the Book","authors":"Brett Defries","doi":"10.1353/sel.2021.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sel.2021.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article explores Thomas Traherne's attraction to collaborative and continuously unfolding lyric projects. I argue that Traherne sees unfinished manuscripts as a reflection of the infinite capacity of a human soul, which is itself the signature of a divinity and lovability that does not rely on successful habituation into a life of virtuous conduct. This article was supported by a fellowship from the University of Iowa to consult Traherne's autograph manuscripts at the Bodleian and British Libraries.","PeriodicalId":45835,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 1500-1900","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84890302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:With the publication of Spenser's Mutabilitie Cantos in 1609, together with the 1596 edition, The Faerie Queene effectually had a new ending, and, with John Upton's edition in 1758, newly explained sabbatical punning in this ending's close. My article centers primarily on this wordplay, bringing it, along with the theme of sovereignty in the Cantos, into relation with Giorgio Agamben's genealogy of "economic theology," an immanent ordering within divinity and the cosmos. Secondarily, I treat the ending of book 6, which gives way in book 7 to a reading experience that is divinely comic.
{"title":"Sabbath Puns and Okonomia in Spenser's Faerie Queene","authors":"Judith H. Anderson","doi":"10.1353/sel.2021.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sel.2021.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:With the publication of Spenser's Mutabilitie Cantos in 1609, together with the 1596 edition, The Faerie Queene effectually had a new ending, and, with John Upton's edition in 1758, newly explained sabbatical punning in this ending's close. My article centers primarily on this wordplay, bringing it, along with the theme of sovereignty in the Cantos, into relation with Giorgio Agamben's genealogy of \"economic theology,\" an immanent ordering within divinity and the cosmos. Secondarily, I treat the ending of book 6, which gives way in book 7 to a reading experience that is divinely comic.","PeriodicalId":45835,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 1500-1900","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83594185","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article is a study of the comic role of bodily openings in The Alchemist. Previous scholarship on social mastery and embodiment in Ben Jonson remains focused on the excretory explosiveness of Jonson's comic bodies, while far less critical attention has been paid to the play's orificial blockages. Indeed, a study of the play's comically blocked bodily passageways complicates a prevailing critical consensus regarding Jonson's use of the orifice as a site of disciplinary subordination. This study extends the methodologies of new philology to shed a different light on the constitutive relationship between corporeality and language in Jonson's tightly constructed orificial play.
{"title":"Ben Jonson's Orificial Comedy","authors":"James Mulder","doi":"10.1353/sel.2021.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sel.2021.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article is a study of the comic role of bodily openings in The Alchemist. Previous scholarship on social mastery and embodiment in Ben Jonson remains focused on the excretory explosiveness of Jonson's comic bodies, while far less critical attention has been paid to the play's orificial blockages. Indeed, a study of the play's comically blocked bodily passageways complicates a prevailing critical consensus regarding Jonson's use of the orifice as a site of disciplinary subordination. This study extends the methodologies of new philology to shed a different light on the constitutive relationship between corporeality and language in Jonson's tightly constructed orificial play.","PeriodicalId":45835,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 1500-1900","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88464568","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"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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