English Language and Literature Commons^™

Sacrifice And Emotional Communities In Early Modern Literature, Kathryn C. Patton

English Theses

The early modern period in England was a time of intense political, religious, and cultural upheaval. Between the Protestant Reformation and urbanization, England experienced significant ideological changes as well as the growing pains of overpopulation and plague in its major cities. The literature of the time illustrates the emotional complexity that many of the authors and citizens experienced firsthand as a result of the tumult in England. This thesis focuses specifically on the period during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and James I, using the works of Sir Philip Sidney and John Donne as structural buoys for the paper, …

‘Faults To Make Us Men’: Shakespeare In The Prison System, Hannah Boyle

Honors Projects

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the positive impact of Shakespeare in prison programs on incarcerated individuals, utilizing empirical data, anecdotal evidence, and scholarly insights. It underscores the educational benefits of engaging with literature and performance arts within prison settings, as well as the various social-emotional learning opportunities, especially the ability to reduce recidivism rates and enhance incarcerated individuals' quality of life.

Drawing on the experience and narrative of many practitioners of theatre in prison and Shakespeare in prisons programs, this paper works to show Shakespeare's unique capacity to connect incarcerated populations with those who have gone through the …

Stomach And Womb: Early Modern Recipes For The Perinatal Woman, Grace E. Beacham

English Theses

Stomach and Womb examines the recipes from early modern obstetrical treatises and midwifery manuals, revealing an ontology of parturiency that winds through the concurrent Shakespearean plays, Twelfth Night and The Winter’s Tale. Gynecological and obstetrical texts from the era detail how pregnant women were to order themselves after conception with utmost concern for their diet, governing the outputs of their bodies by managing the inputs, the foods they ingested before, during, and after pregnancy and childbirth. Further, the associated images of the stomach and the womb during this time present an essential link between foodways and a construct of …

"A Special Cause Of Corrupting Their Youth": The Long History Of Censorship, Hysteria, And The Representation Of Queer Desire In Literature, Kenia Torres

Student Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will focus on queer representation in literature, going all the way back to the works of Milton and Shakespeare and include an exploration of contemporary text Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. I will trace queer representation back to these authors from the canon to show that queer representation in literature and societies’ hysterical reaction to it are neither new nor emergent. Chapter 1 addresses the trending outrage towards books that include LGBTQ+ representation, framing it as a “new” and “emergent” occurrence. Chapter 2 refutes the claims that LGBTQ+ representation is either of those things by introducing Milton’s angels— …

How Early Modern English Pedagogy Shaped The Gendered And Racialized Use Of Magic In William Shakespeare’S The Tempest, Erin Lindsay Faya

Graduate Thesis Collection

Magical usage plays a significant role in William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. However, who gets to use magic and in what ways? Why is Prospero painted the protagonist while Sycorax gets labeled a witch though both use magic? This thesis looks at how early modern English pedagogy shapes the use of magic in The Tempest. When magic is read as knowledge, then the pedagogy influencing early modern education dictates whose knowledge counts and is seen as correct and whose is erased and vilified. The epistemological formation happening in early modern England is apparent in The Tempest as Prospero uses magic …

The Framing Of The Shrew: Induction, Gender, And Agency In William Shakespeare’S The Taming Of The Shrew, Samantha Stringham

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Shrews abound, not only in Shakespeare’s works but in our modern world. Katherine, Shakespeare’s titular shrew, is in the good company of Beatrice, Adriana, and even, some argue, her seemingly virtuous sister Bianca. These women, all of whom push against the confines posed by the social conventions of Renaissance womanhood, have become increasingly relevant as women, now more than ever, demand that their voices be heard and continue to rally against the assertion that railing, scolding, turbulent behavior makes one a shrew (or perhaps, that being a shrew is an inherently bad thing). The increasingly feminist leanings of modern audiences …

"Cabined, Cribbed, Confined": Tyrannical Anxiety And Maternal Power In Shakespeare, Elle J. Nieuwsma

Masters Theses

The tyrannical king, a common trope in Shakespearean plays, is on the surface a powerful and confident character. He is motivated, though, by overwhelming anxiety and fear about losing his power and the freedom he experiences through it. In other words, he suffers from a metaphorical claustrophobia and is terrified of being confined to physical, social, and sexual inadequacy. In order to protect himself and maintain his freedom, the tyrant must project his anxiety onto someone else, and interestingly, the Shakespearean tyrants choose a shared target: mothers.

Through a series of close-readings and analysis, this article explores how several different …

Anti-Woman Invective On The Early Modern Stage: Abuse, Degradation, And Resistance, Savannah Xaver

Dissertations

On the early modern stage, gendered epithets like “strumpet,” “mermaid,” “minx,” “hobby horse,” “courtesan,” “drab,” and “whore” are not just markers of misogyny. Instead, these insults harm the male user as well as their female target. My cross-playwright and cross-genre connections show the complex, wide use and impact of anti-woman terms. A wide-ranging study of the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries reveals that gendered insults signify masculine mental decline in tragedies as well as comedies and tragicomedies. In tragedy, the increasingly violent language of male slur users – like, for example, the frustrated Othello, who declares, of his wife, …

Contagious Animality: Species, Disease, And Metaphor In Early Modern Literature And Culture, Jeremy Cornelius

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In my dissertation, Contagious Animality: Species, Disease, and Metaphor in Early Modern Literature and Culture, I close read examples of Renaissance drama alongside their contemporary cultural texts to examine anxieties around social differences as constructed and mediated through what I call “contagious animality” in early modern English culture. Animal metaphors circulated anxieties around social differences on the early modern cultural stage in English drama where animality elicits uncertainties about identitarian constructions of difference. In this vein, I close read formal elements and their interactions with early modern culture to argue that animal metaphors transmit modes of speciating difference in …

Don't Say Gay: Love Language In Coriolanus, Patrick Lynch

Dissertations and Theses

Coriolanus is one of Shakespeare's Roman plays, a sub-genre which also includes Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra. The one element these plays have in common is the ideal Roman hero, the civis romanus, who meets a tragic end. These heroes are not generally considered queer as no free Roman male could allow himself, per social indoctrination instilled since youth, to take on a submissive role. However, Caius Martius and the relationship he maintains with Tullus Aufidius could arguably be seen as homoerotic or even, possibly, homosexual. This paper takes a closer look at …

Othello As A Political Commentary On "The Myth Of Venice", Alejandro Tamayo

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The premise of this essay is that the ascension of James VI of Scotland to the throne of England in 1603 motivated Shakespeare to give Othello -- performed for the king in 1604-- a setting, topicality, and an embedded political commentary that suited the political ideas and personal interests of the new monarch. After an overview of the possible sources of the play, this essay also reviews some of James's political writings, where he expresses his absolutist philosophy. Although some commentators believe there is a pro-republican subtext in Othello, this essay argues the opposite. It posits that by adding the …

Shakespeare And The Supreme Court: How The Justices Reveal Their Ideologies By Referencing His Works, Rachel Anderson

Honors Projects

The works of William Shakespeare have been referenced many times throughout history, even by Supreme Court justices. Building off of an observation of a mock trial by James Shapiro, this project puts the utilization of Shakespeare from three Court opinions in relation to its context within the play and the opinion to examine what the reference reveals about the authoring justices' ideology. In doing so, this project concludes that the justices utilize Shakespeare's works in their opinions for various reasons, including to infuse their beliefs into their argument. This implies that Supreme Court justices do not base their opinions on …

Maneuvering Mestizaje In Shakespeare's Tragicomedies, Andrea Phiana Borunda

English Language and Literature ETDs

This project explores and wades through the implications of mestizaje in the murky depths of Shakespeare’s oceans. Disguises and mistakes in identities and in gender and “race” draw on the hybridity and indeterminacy of the early modern stage and its fluidity and lack of order to reflect an unhomed and unmediated formation of nationhood, diaspora, and (trans)global identities. Drawing on ecocritical and critical race theories, I contend the tragicomic works of Shakespeare expose and dismantle ecoracial fantasies of white male supremacy to curate a space of mestizaje for a new generation of BIPOC scholars.

Racial Poetics: Early Modern Race And The Form Of Comedy, Yunah Kae

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation writes a premodern history of race as an alternative literary history of comedy. This project argues that early modern generic changes in comic conventions reflect and produce a logic of race, which assign relational positions of knowingness and unknowing as naturally immutable. Renaissance comedies resembled epistemological laboratories in which to theorize the notion of knowledge itself, and the comedies of Shakespeare, Jonson, and Dekker, Middleton, and Rowley abound in theatrical technologies which create and explore differences in knowing and ignorance. Blackened skin function as a signifier of preclusion from the humanist knowledge-reservoir of “poesy”; the foreign stink wafting …

The Eye’S Construction Of Power In Richard Ii, Julius Caesar And Macbeth, John O’Brien

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This study seeks to analyze the optical performance of power in three of Shakespeare’s plays: Richard II, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth. Using a political framework via Kantorowicz’s King’s Two Bodies and Maus’s Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance, this paper explores the interior and exterior personas as they pertain and interact with public and private spaces. This paper will track Shakespeare’s contribution to this developing “modern” shift in the understanding of appearance and its role in the presentations of power in these three plays. In each of these plays, I argue, Shakespeare provides us with a series of presentational …

Hell's Black Intelligencers: Representing Clandestine Labor On The Early Modern Stage, Evan Alexander Hixon

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation, "Hell's Black Intelligencers: Representing Clandestine Labor on the Early Modern Stage," builds upon critical scholarship pertaining to early modern service and political theory to interrogate the imagined economic and social functions of clandestine service in the plays of Shakespeare, Jonson, and Webster. Drawing heavily on the works of András Kiséry, David Schalkwyk, Elizabeth Rivlin, and Michael Neill, I look at the exchange of service between spy and spymaster as an accumulation of social and cultural capital. Thinking through spying in this light, this dissertation explores how playwrights represent these service relationships which fall outside of systems of patronage-driven …

Speaking Chastity: Female Speech, Silence, And The Strategic Performance Of Chaste Identity In Early Modern Drama And Women's Writing, Lisa Templin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation explores the complex and contradictory relationship between female speech and chaste reputation in the early modern period. I draw on J.L. Austin’s speech act theory, Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s understanding of homosociality to study the acts of speech and silence involved in the strategic construction of chaste identity in early modern drama and women’s writing and the role that female homosocial networks play in helping to support the public appearance of feminine virtue. This dissertation scrutinizes literary moments in which the chaste reputations of women writers and their theatrical counterparts are at …

The Ideal Elizabethan Marriage (Or Naught): How Fletcher’S Comedy, The Tamer Tamed Serves As A Sequel, Homage And Riposte To Shakespeare’S The Taming Of The Shrew, Katherine Brillante

Student Theses

In this thesis, I take my cue from Emma Smith, who observes that John Fletcher’s The Woman’s Prize, or The Tamer Tamed is “a sequel, an homage, and a riposte to Shakespeare’s own Taming of the Shrew” (xii). While demonstrating Smith’s point, I also explore the ideology of marriage in Renaissance England, considering what it means to be a rebellious woman with respect to that institution. While, as Ann Jennalie Cook observes, “a play is not an exact replica of the customs of the time” (83), these two plays nevertheless illuminate the ways in which marriage customs during this …

Caliban The Savage : Shakespeare’S Critique Of Colonialist Misappropriation Of Indigenous Identities, Leonard Aquil Hughes

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis engages with Shakespeare’s The Tempest, analyzing the character Caliban as a critique of British colonialism. I argue that Caliban is not intended simply as a begrudged antagonist, but as a figure intended to represent New World natives. Shakespeare’s “savage” also acts as an on-stage embodiment of Africans and other victims of British imperial exploits that suffered subjugation and hegemony. With this character, Shakespeare provides a demonstration of the relationship between Europeans and the colonized, while challenging the very institution of colonialism. Such a work provides valuable post-Shakespearean insights as well. Caliban contributes directly to the dialogue surrounding the …

“Strumpet,” “Huswife,” “Whore”: Centering Othello’S Bianca, Phoebe Merten

English (MA) Theses

Is Bianca a sex worker? What meanings change if she is or isn’t? Not enough artistic or critical attention has been paid the character. It seems likely that the initial lack of attention stemmed from Bianca’s status as a purported sex worker, as though this makes her somehow categorically different from the other women in the play, or inherently less interesting. There has in the past decade or so been a marked increase in scholarship on sex work, but this too largely skims over Bianca, likely because of the ambiguity surrounding her profession.

In my introduction I go over some …

What The World Needs Now: Love, Humor And The Shakespeare Connection, Kelly Capers

English MA Theses

What the World Needs Now: Love, Humor and the Shakespeare Connection discusses how the modern romantic comedy (rom com) genre depicts gender roles in adaptations of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Taming of the Shrew. This paper looks at Shakespeare’s contributions to the themes of romantic comedy and how 21^st Century filmmakers interpret his concepts. Because rom com typically lacks value among scholars, much of this genre’s impact on audiences is overlooked, yet its popularity makes it an undeniable presence deserving a closer examination. The 2020 pandemic brought into specific relief, not only the popularity …

A Man Not A Monster : Reimagining Disability In Hollow Crown's Richard Iii, Taylor E. Uphus

Honors Theses

Traditional portrayals of William Shakespeare’s Richard III (1592) in film interpret Richard’s physical disability as an outward reflection of his evil. In recent years, disabilities studies scholars have reconsidered the historic association of Richard’s physical deformity with immorality. Unlike previous Richard III films, the BBC’s Hollow Crown: Richard III (Dominic Cooke, 2016) highlights Richard’s mental abuse and trauma. While the film does not shy away from Richard’s villainy, its more empathic depiction of Richard contests the one-dimensional stage and film representation of him as a conniving monster. Ultimately, this film presents Richard III to critique society’s treatment of disabled individuals.

On Cleopatra Vii: From Horace And Shakespeare To Self-Representation, Silja M. Hilton

Honors Theses

This thesis explores and analyzes Horace’s Ode 1.37 and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra in context of their poetic and theatrical narratives, word choice, and grammatical structures in an effort to form a clearer image of Cleopatra VII. While each work is placed within its historical settings, I do not pursue their historical ‘truths.’ Rather, I draw from the authors’ literary conceptions about the Ruler, from Horace’s inpotens (“a woman lacking in self-control”) to fierce agency in deciding death (“deliberata morte ferocior”), to Shakespeare’s ‘othering’ of Cleopatra as tawny, gypsy, and whore, to his portrayals of her as Goddess …

"In Loving Virtue": Staging The Virgin Body In Early Modern Drama, Miranda Viederman

Honors Projects

The aim of this Honors project is to investigate representations of female virginity in Renaissance English dramatic works. I view the period as one in which the womb became the site of a unique renewal of cultural anxieties surrounding the stability of the patriarchy and the inaccessibility of female sexual desire. I am most interested in virginity as a “bodily narrative” dependent on the construction and maintenance of performance. I analyze representations of virginity in female characters from four works of drama originating in the Jacobean period of the English Renaissance, during and after the end of the reign of …

"This Blessed Plot": An Ecocritical Approach To Shakespeare's Second Tetralogy, Silvina Barna

Master of Arts in Humanities | Master's Theses 1936 - 2022

This research project aims at bringing to light the non-human dimension in Shakespeare’s second tetralogy, i.e., Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV and Henry V. In the context of the military confrontations that preceded the Wars of the Roses, the disruption of human relationships bears an impact on the land and the non-human cosmos in general. Through his literary craft and thorough understanding of human and non-human nature, Shakespeare reveals an intricate network of relationships, which, even when broken, can be mended.

My project is guided by a presentist understanding of literature. Studying the relationship between the human …

Negotiating Space: Spatial Violation On The Early Modern Stage, 1587-1638, Gregory W. Sargent

Doctoral Dissertations

Recent criticism proves the malleability of theatrical space as a lens through which the discussion of Renaissance drama proliferates. Negotiating Space works towards the articulation of the importance of space in the representational mimesis of performance by examining moments of violence, violation, misuse, and misappropriation. I draw a connection between the lived, material sites of the plays’ action and the ideological import of representing those spaces dramatically using a focus on violation. Though much good scholarship exists detailing London-centric approaches to dramatic space, this study discursively reifies identifiable staged spaces to connect with the lives of theatrical patrons no matter …

"You Taught Me Language:" Using Shakespeare To Teach English To Speakers Of Other Languages, Sarah Blake

Honors Projects

This thesis explores how to use Shakespeare effectively in English language education. By considering cultural backgrounds and different translations, ESOL educators can assess what areas students need more guidance in, and how Shakespearean texts can help scaffold those areas. These texts can be used to teach grammar and mechanics as well as literary devices. The most effective teaching methods are also explored: examples of appropriate visuals, classroom activities, and discussion topics are given.

Egyptian Stasis And Imperial Quick-Time: Recursive Xenophobia Cloaked In Mysticism, Laura S. Deluca

Undergraduate Honors Theses

I will be examining temporality in British texts about Egypt across time. In order to achieve this, I analyze the play Antony and Cleopatra (1606) by William Shakespeare, and put it in conversation with Pharos, the Egyptian (1899) by Guy Newell Boothby. I will also be discussing Alexandria (2009) by Lindsey Davis, as a demonstration that the pattern in my findings is enduring. I will be dissecting the portrayal of Egyptian temporality, which I have found to be conveyed as a stasis, as contrasted by the quick-time of dominating imperial powers. These sources will allow me to compare depictions of …

Broken Harts: Mourning The Human/Animal Divide In Shakespeare’S As You Like It And Wordsworth’S “Hart-Leap Well”, Jennifer Jourlait

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis compares the deer scenes in Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Wordsworth’s “Hart-Leap Well.” Both raise questions about man’s right to hunt animals with impunity. Shakespeare’s Jaques superficially takes up the issue of animal rights whereas Wordsworth’s personification of the stag evokes the reader’s sympathy for the animal.

Shakespeare's Problem Comedies As Self-Critique, John-Paul Spiro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I argue that Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well reveal underexplored features common to Shakespeare’s comedies. Often interpreted as “problem plays,” they are more representative of the genre than previously acknowledged. I suggest that Shakespeare wrote them to de-nature and de-familiarize his own practices. The plays present the coercion inherent in the normativizing of marriage as the basis for social and political order. The “happiness” achieved—or at least gestured towards—at the end of Shakespearean comedy restricts human possibilities and is often presented as an imposition or injunction rather than a reflection of spontaneous, collective emotion. In particular, …