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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Acting, Integrity, And Gender In Coriolanus, Kent Lehnhof
Acting, Integrity, And Gender In Coriolanus, Kent Lehnhof
English Faculty Articles and Research
Shakespeare's Coriolanus... anticipates and corroborates modern-day analyses emphasizing the sociopolitical dimensions and determinants of antitheatrical discourse. In the present essay, I would like to shift my focus from questions of class/status to questions of sex/gender, endeavoring to trace the links between Coriolanus’s antiperformative zeal and his ultra-masculine identity. For though it is true that Coriolanus opposes the dissimulation of others on political grounds (i.e., it creates social confusion), what causes him to reject play-acting in his own person is the sexualized fear that it will unman him (i.e., turn him into a squeaking virgin or crying boy). In this manner, …
Incest And Empire In The Faerie Queene, Kent Lehnhof
Incest And Empire In The Faerie Queene, Kent Lehnhof
English Faculty Articles and Research
"When considered in the context of Elizabeth's effort to silence all discussion of incest, Edmund Spenser's courtly epic aiming to cultivate favor with the monarch looks like a disastrous miscalculation, for incest appears throughout The Faerie Queene. Indeed, incest sits at the center (both literally and figuratively) of the Book of Chastity, the very book wherein Spenser encourages Elizabeth 'in mirrours more then one her selfe to see.' In the present essay, I investigate the apparently illogical and impolitic prominence afforded to incest in book three of The Faerie Queene, ultimately arguing that the imperialist logic underpinning the epic is …