scholarly journals Necropolitical Resistance in Early Modern Drama

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madison Jansen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Early Modern Drama ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
Revenge Tragedy ◽  
Contested Space ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Modern Era

Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy has been widely-read by the academic community, but not always for its own sake. Its influence on the Revenge Tragedy genre, and Shakespeare's Hamlet, have been common topics, sometimes at the expense of readings that engage with the play itself. This thesis continues a tradition of applying the ideas of Michel Foucault to the Early Modern era in order to interrogate the role of power, knowledge, and sovereignty. This thesis explores the way that Michel Foucault's theory of biopolitics, and the related concepts of necropolitics and necroresistance, create significant new ways of understanding the characters and themes of Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. I first examine Bel-Imperia's presence in the text, as both a woman and a political pawn, and argue that her physical body exists in a contested space, serving as both a location for control and a means of resistance. By reinterpreting her role in the revenge narrative and her suicide through a political lens, we can more fully appreciate her violent actions as expressions of agency in pursuit of a calculated goal. Additionally, when we look at the stories of Hieronimo and Horatio through a necropolitical lens, it foregrounds the centrality of class in the conflict of the play. Through a close reading of Horatio's murder, I argue that Horatio and Hieronimo represent the threat of social mobility to the insular aristocratic class embodied by Lorenzo and Balthazar, and Horatio's murder serves as a reassertion of absolute sovereign control. Hieronimo's violent actions carry different implications when we are able to read them as not only acts of vengeance, but also, to some extent, of revolution. Ultimately, I argue that applying biopolitical theories to The Spanish Tragedy, and other plays from the Early Modern era, presents scholars with an opportunity to differently appreciate the relationship between agency and violence, and make sense of the seemingly senseless violence that often characterizes these works.

Servants

2019 ◽  
pp. 126-163
Author(s):  
George Oppitz-Trotman
Keyword(s):  
Social Anxiety ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Drama ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
Revenge Tragedy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Revenge Plays ◽  
Ethical Relations

Servants in early modern drama have increasingly been investigated less as objects of domination than as subjects capable of affective and ethical relations with their masters. Both sorts of interpretation depend upon the assumption that actual early modern servants are straightforwardly represented in drama of the time. Observing that common players were themselves patronised and liveried servants, and that the theatre itself appeared as a form of mercenary service, this chapter shows how procedures of dramatic figuration implicate identification of the servant in a complex dialectic of discernment. With roots in various sorts of contemporary social anxiety, such difficulties are at their most intense in revenge tragedy. In many places reading revenge plays involves confronting their ability to undo the social concepts used to grasp their historical content.

«Ultimamente con non poco travaglio alla Cocincina si videro»: viaggiatori gesuiti in Asia orientale nel secolo XVII

2021 ◽  
pp. 219-262
Author(s):  
Carlo Pelliccia
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
East Asia ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Geographical Information ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
Unpublished Manuscript ◽  
Mutual Knowledge ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

This article examines one section, Regno della Cocincina of the unpublished manuscript Ragguaglio della missione del Giappone (17th century) preserved in the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (ARSI). I analyze the historical-political, socio-cultural, ethnographic, and geographical information conveyed by the report’s author. The text explores the role of the Society of Jesus’ correspondence in the phenomenon of cultural interaction and mutual knowledge between Europe and East Asia in the early modern era.

scholarly journals “Take (Meta)physic, pomp”: King Lear and (Dis)oriented Ontology

ROMARD ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 19-38
Author(s):  
M. Burdick Smith
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Early Modern Drama ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
Object Oriented Ontology ◽  
Insight Into

This essay uses Object-Oriented Ontology, a posthumanist theoretical model, to explore how King Lear’s use of and relation to objects can provide insight into his characterization. This essay provides a model for scrutinizing the role of objects—whether animate or inanimate—in performances of early modern drama; furthermore, it argues that King Lear’s use of objects reveals a consistent refusal to understand others, which upsets a redemptive arc in the play. To that end, the article proposes an ethical model—demonstrated by Kent—that responds to the play’s otherwise desolate worldview.

Religion and Race in the Early Modern Iberian Atlantic

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica L. Delgado ◽  
Kelsey C. Moss
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Colonial Latin America ◽  
The West ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Religion And Race ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Modern Era

This chapter reviews the scholarly treatment of religion and race in the early modern Iberian Atlantic world and colonial Latin America and suggests new directions for research. Through a critical reflection of the place that Spain and colonial Latin America have held in histories of race in the West, the chapter challenges historians of the Americas to rethink their understanding of the relationship between religion and race in the early modern era. It highlights processes and ideologies visible in Spanish America and calls for investigation into similar dynamics in the Anglophone colonies.

The decline and displacement of custom in early modern Spain

2019 ◽  
Vol 87 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-472
Author(s):  
Aniceto Masferrer
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Early Modern Spain ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

SummaryThis article aims to describe the reasons for the decline of customary law in the early modern era. Confining the discussion to a limited geographical setting – the Iberian Peninsula – the arguments I used might be easily applied to other European jurisdictions. Part I presents an explanation of the predominance of custom in the medieval Spanish legal traditions. Part II describes the general features of the law in the early modern era, since they contributed – to a greater or lesser degree – to the demise of custom. Part III focuses more specifically on the theoretical and practical reasons for the decline and displacement of custom in early modern Spain. Part IV describes the consequences of the Decrees of Nueva Planta (1707-1718), approved by Felipe V in the context of the War of the Spanish Succession (1700-1714), regarding the development of the notion and role of custom in the eighteenth century. The article concludes with some reflections, emphasising that although customs do not easily co-exist with the state or a strong political power, neither do they entirely perish.

The Open Museum and its Enemies: An Essay in the Philosophy of Museums

2016 ◽  
Vol 79 ◽  
pp. 35-53
Author(s):  
Charles Taliaferro
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Open Society ◽  
Physical Force ◽  
Democratic Culture ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

AbstractBorrowing from the title and some of the content of Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies (1945), it is argued that museums have great value as sites for what may be called a philosophical culture. A philosophical culture is one in which members or citizens engage in (ideally) fair-minded debate and shared reflection, presenting and evaluating reasons for different positions particularly as these have relevance for matters of governance. In a philosophical culture, persuasion is almost always a matter of seeking to provide reasonable grounds for adopting some position without resorting to violence or physical force (though, of course, force may be necessary to constrain those who themselves resort to violence).A philosophical culture is, in turn, an important foundation for a democratic culture and republic. A philosophy of museums emerges, a model we shall call the Philosophical Culture Museum Model. This concept is stipulative and ideal in the sense that it presents a paradigm of a museum with great virtue and promise. It must be confessed, however, that, historically, this is an emerging concept of the role of museums and one not evident in many of the museums in the early modern era or today. Reasons are offered as to why the time may be right to recognize the philosophy of museums as a particular sub-field in the overall practice of philosophy.

Friendship and Justice

2020 ◽  
pp. 144-170
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Frazer
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Timon Of Athens ◽  
Modern Era

Merchant of Venice and Timon of Athens are both read, in this chapter, as questioning the place of friendship in political societies and states. Classically, friendship, or friendly relations at least, between citizens has been understood as a condition of political stability; but in the early modern era an idea of friendship as a transcendent tie, indifferent to politics, and in tension with it was developing. Republican thought also questions the relationship between friendship and commerce, with some critics seeing these as antithetical, others seeing them as bound up together. Both of these plays problematize the dilemmas of exchange, of contract, of bonds in the sense of agreement and promise, in relation both to intimate ties, and to the authority of sovereign institutions. Merchant of Venice considers these matters in particular in relation to a society fissured by religious antagonism—by anti-semitism; both plays consider them in relation to a society marked by clear sex and gender distinction and exclusion.

Mughals and the ‘maritime dynamic’ along the maritime frontier in Gujarat, c.1572–1759

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 402-415
Author(s):  
Aasim Khwaja
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
Commercial System ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Gujarat Coast ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

The literature relating to the nature, scope and legacy of the engagement of the Mughals with the maritime space in the early modern era is beset with certain inadequacies. The consensus has it that a sophisticated commercial system functioned along the Gujarat coast, centred at Surat, largely independent of the presence of the Mughals per se in the region. This article re-examines the role of the Mughals to reveal a more dynamic picture that accounts for the paradoxes that riddle current understanding of this vital aspect of Mughal history.

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