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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Contradictory Shakespeare: An Investigation Of Female Protagonists In Othello, Measure For Measure, And Pericles, Mingyue Xu
Student Theses and Dissertations
Unlike the stereotyped image of women in the Elizabethan era, in which women should submit to men’s control, Desdemona in Othello, Isabella in Measure for Measure, and Marina in Pericles present their powerful and brave characteristics when facing male dominance. More specifically, all three young women — Desdemona, Isabella and Marina — negotiate sexual and marital arrangements with their language intelligently, despite the fact that they sometimes lack self-determining power in the plays. That is to say, Shakespeare gives women rhetorical power while in certain circumstances, men cannot be persuaded. Such contradiction within how Shakespeare depicts his female …
Furious: Myth, Gender, And The Origins Of Lady Macbeth, Emma King
Furious: Myth, Gender, And The Origins Of Lady Macbeth, Emma King
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This thesis attempts to understand the fabulously complex and poisonously unsettling Lady Macbeth as a product of classical reception and intertextuality in early modern England. Whence comes her “undaunted mettle” (1.7.73)? Why is she, like the regicide she helps commit, such a “bloody piece of work” (2.3.108)? How does her ability to be “bloody, bold, and resolute” (4.1.81), as Macbeth is commanded to be, reflect canonical literary ideas, early modern or otherwise, regarding women, gender, and violence? Approaching texts in the literary canon as the result of transformation and reception, this research analyzes the ways in which Lady Macbeth’s gender, …
Shakespeare's Villains: The Displacement Of Iago And Edmund, Julius C. Adena
Shakespeare's Villains: The Displacement Of Iago And Edmund, Julius C. Adena
Theses and Dissertations
My thesis argues that Shakespeare’s villains, Iago and Edmund, are displaced from their rightful positions and are left isolated from society. While many critics either condemn or defend Shakespeare’s villains, I will examine how both characters use their knowledge of rhetoric and persuasion to survive the displacement that they have experienced. The first chapter explores the importance of military ranks and the mentality of a soldier in Othello. War becomes a metaphor to Iago, and because of his displacement as lieutenant, he takes initiative to win the war. I will examine the different masks he wears, his powers as …
Idiot Science For A Blue Humanities: Shakespeare's The Comedy Of Errors And Deleuze's Mad Cogito, Steven Swarbrick
Idiot Science For A Blue Humanities: Shakespeare's The Comedy Of Errors And Deleuze's Mad Cogito, Steven Swarbrick
Publications and Research
Can we imagine a Blue Humanities that takes the non-relation as a starting point for ecological thought? I believe we can. Following Shakespeare and Deleuze, this essay engages in a thought experiment that, if it is not too absurd, might, like the ship of fools of medieval times, unmoor the Blue Humanities from its current safe harbor by putting the thought of ‘our’ world under erasure. This is not a matter of turning thought around, such that, by turning to the sea, we turn thought away from calculation and instrumental reason and rediscover our true nature. Rather, the image of …