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Philosophies of retribution: Kyd, Shakespeare, Webster, and the revenge tragedy genre
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Title
Philosophies of retribution: Kyd, Shakespeare, Webster, and the revenge tragedy genre
Name
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Crosbie
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Christopher James
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Christopher Crosbie
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Bartels
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Emily
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Advisory Committee
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Emily C. Bartels
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chair
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Coiro
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Ann
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Ann Baynes Coiro
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Levao
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Ronald
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Advisory Committee
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Ronald Levao
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internal member
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McDonald
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Russ
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Advisory Committee
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Russ McDonald
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outside member
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Rutgers University
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degree grantor
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Graduate School-New Brunswick
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theses
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2007
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2007
Language
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English
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electronic
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vi, 214 pages
Abstract
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The first book-length attempt to set the generic parameters of early modern revenge tragedy was also the last. Since Fredson Bowers' Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy (1940), scholarship has interrogated literary and cultural issues within the genre. But it has left intact the prevailing assumption that such plays feature revenge as their principal focus, their very reason for existing as plays. Rather than privilege the retribution trajectory as the end point of critical inquiry, my dissertation argues that revenge proved a particularly apt vehicle for engaging with the highly contested philosophies of the period. For while critical discourse has read revenge as principally concerned with matters of justice and law, the retribution motif, unique among other early modern dramatic conventions, continually recalls to audience attention both the initiating forces behind current action and the fluid boundaries between the immaterial and material. By emphasizing the relationships between cause and effect, spirit and matter, and even idea and action, early modern revenge tragedies invite reconsideration, then, of a wider range of philosophies than the legal and religious injunctions overtly invoked within such plays. Indeed, early modern revenge drama takes on, with surprising sophistication, such
variegated matters as class, perceptions of moderation, the essential composition of the material world, and the generation of political power through fabulist narrative. While my individual chapters draw attention to strains of intellectual history not traditionally associated with each play - an Aristotelian faculty psychology in The Spanish Tragedy, the ethical mean in Titus Andronicus, the Lucretian atomism of Hamlet, and the Baconian fabulism of The Duchess of Malfi - my project seeks to reveal a larger point about the dynamics of revenge drama. This dissertation contends that early modern revenge tragedy emphasizes the complex interplay between the noetic, or conceptual, and the phenomenological in order to imagine, often in radical ways, the natural, ethical, and political philosophies that shape early modern culture.
variegated matters as class, perceptions of moderation, the essential composition of the material world, and the generation of political power through fabulist narrative. While my individual chapters draw attention to strains of intellectual history not traditionally associated with each play - an Aristotelian faculty psychology in The Spanish Tragedy, the ethical mean in Titus Andronicus, the Lucretian atomism of Hamlet, and the Baconian fabulism of The Duchess of Malfi - my project seeks to reveal a larger point about the dynamics of revenge drama. This dissertation contends that early modern revenge tragedy emphasizes the complex interplay between the noetic, or conceptual, and the phenomenological in order to imagine, often in radical ways, the natural, ethical, and political philosophies that shape early modern culture.
Note
(type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note
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Includes bibliographical references (p. 199-213).
Subject
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Topic
Literatures in English
Subject
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Topic
Literature, Comparative
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Graduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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rucore19991600001
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http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.2/rucore10001600001.ETD.13463
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ETD_231
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doi:10.7282/T3X34XVD
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ETD doctoral
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Open
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Christopher Crosbie
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Rutgers University. Graduate School-New Brunswick
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Non-exclusive ETD license
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Author Agreement License
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I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.
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