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Forms of service
Descriptive
TitleInfo
Title
Forms of service
SubTitle
the poetics of community in early modern England
Name
(type = personal)
NamePart
(type = family)
Maitra
NamePart
(type = given)
Ellorashree
NamePart
(type = date)
1975-
DisplayForm
Ellorashree Maitra
Role
RoleTerm
(authority = RULIB)
author
Name
(type = personal)
NamePart
(type = family)
Coiro
NamePart
(type = given)
Ann Baynes
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Ann Baynes Coiro
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
Role
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chair
Name
(type = personal)
NamePart
(type = family)
Bartels
NamePart
(type = given)
Emily C
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Emily C Bartels
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
Role
RoleTerm
(authority = RULIB)
internal member
Name
(type = personal)
NamePart
(type = family)
Levao
NamePart
(type = given)
Ronald
DisplayForm
Ronald Levao
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
Role
RoleTerm
(authority = RULIB)
internal member
Name
(type = personal)
NamePart
(type = family)
Harris
NamePart
(type = given)
Jonathan Gil
DisplayForm
Jonathan Gil Harris
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
Role
RoleTerm
(authority = RULIB)
outside member
Name
(type = corporate)
NamePart
Rutgers University
Role
RoleTerm
(authority = RULIB)
degree grantor
Name
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NamePart
Graduate School - New Brunswick
Role
RoleTerm
(authority = RULIB)
school
TypeOfResource
Text
Genre
(authority = marcgt)
theses
OriginInfo
DateCreated
(qualifier = exact)
2012
DateOther
(qualifier = exact);
(type = degree)
2012-05
CopyrightDate
(qualifier = exact)
2012
Place
PlaceTerm
(type = code)
xx
Language
LanguageTerm
(authority = ISO639-2b);
(type = code)
eng
Abstract
(type = abstract)
This dissertation examines how the concept of service shapes representations of community in texts drawn from four key early modern genres: tragedy, court-masque, travel journal, and epic poem. As a condition of bondage central to early modern social experience, service crucially mediated agency and communal identity in both domestic and cross-cultural contexts. Generically varied as they are, early modern tragedy, masque, travel-journal, and epic all share a profound concern with the founding imperatives of communal life. In the texts I study, this concern manifests itself through an exploration of service as an inherently social, but not necessarily sociable concept. Thus, juxtaposing dystopian social critique with utopian idealism, Shakespeare and Middleton’s tragedy, Timon of Athens (1607), presents the break-down of service-relationships as symptomatic of a general ethical crisis affecting the Athenian civic body. Ben Jonson’s royal masque, Gypsies Metamorphosed (1621), also mines the discourse of service to explore competing visions of national community. Service mediated the representation of communal identities in cross-cultural contexts too, as I find in my work on Sir Thomas Roe’s journal account of his trading embassy to the Mughal court in India in 1615-19, and in my reading of Milton’s Paradise Lost as a critique of English imperial ambition. Subscribing to a specifically Anglo-European ideology of service helped expatriate Englishmen like Roe distinguish themselves from the native cultures of service they encountered abroad. Contrarily, Milton’s complex treatment of the trope of Oriental despotism in Paradise Lost troubled such rigid distinctions between English service and alien slavery, even as it foregrounded godly service in the Edenic “new world” as key to just magisterial labor and Christian community. In tracing connections between various literary genres’ treatments of service as a social ethic, I find that these genres do not simply mediate but actively shape the meaning of service, based on their own aesthetic and ideological preoccupations. At once unifying and exclusionary, establishmentarian and utopian, service emerges in my study as a highly contested category, and as such, a perfect vector for diverse constructions of community in the cultural ferment of the early modern era.
Subject
(authority = RUETD)
Topic
Literatures in English
RelatedItem
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TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier
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ETD
Identifier
ETD_3985
PhysicalDescription
Form
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electronic resource
InternetMediaType
application/pdf
InternetMediaType
text/xml
Extent
vii, 189 p.
Note
(type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note
(type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
Note
(type = statement of responsibility)
by Ellorashree Maitra
Subject
(authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Household employees in literature
Subject
(authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Master and servant in literature
Identifier
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http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.1/rucore10001600001.ETD.000065216
RelatedItem
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TitleInfo
Title
Graduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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rucore19991600001
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NjNbRU
Identifier
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doi:10.7282/T3P26X3S
Genre
(authority = ExL-Esploro)
ETD doctoral
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Rights
RightsDeclaration
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The author owns the copyright to this work.
RightsHolder
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Name
FamilyName
Maitra
GivenName
Ellorashree
Role
Copyright Holder
RightsEvent
Type
Permission or license
DateTime
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(qualifier = exact);
(point = start)
2012-04-16 10:26:48
AssociatedEntity
Name
Ellorashree Maitra
Role
Copyright holder
Affiliation
Rutgers University. Graduate School - New Brunswick
AssociatedObject
Type
License
Name
Author Agreement License
Detail
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.
RightsEvent
DateTime
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(point = start)
2012-05-31
DateTime
(encoding = w3cdtf);
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2014-05-31
Type
Embargo
Detail
Access to this PDF has been restricted at the author's request. It will be publicly available after May 31st, 2014.
Copyright
Status
Copyright protected
Availability
Status
Open
Reason
Permission or license
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Technical
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