Patriarchal Structures in The Winter's Tale

PMLA ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 97 (5) ◽  
pp. 819-829 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter B. Erickson
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Politics ◽  
The Winter's Tale ◽  
Winter's Tale ◽  
Dramatic Action ◽  
Role Of Women

From the perspective of sexual politics, The Winter's Tale is a remarkable achievement: it recovers the possibility of harmonious male-female relations from the destructive antagonism between the sexes in the tragedies. In particular, it expands the role of women, making the combined forces of Hermione, Paulina, and Perdita central to the dramatic action. This development is so moving that we tend simply to welcome it without inquiring into the centrality of women and the terms of the sexual reconciliation. I argue that such an inquiry must be made. A sentimental reading of the play looks exclusively at its positive aspects and fails to recognize that women s power remains strictly circumscribed within the patriarchal framework. Acknowledging this limitation provides for a multiple rather than a monolithic response to the play and makes it possible both to affirm and to dissent from the ending. (PBE)

The Role of Autolycus in The Winter's Tale

1969 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 283
Author(s):  
Lee Sheridan Cox
Keyword(s):  
The Winter's Tale ◽  
Winter's Tale

Spectres of Female Sovereignty in Shakespeare’s Plays

2016 ◽  
pp. 111-130
Author(s):  
Susan Frye
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Female Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
The Winter's Tale ◽  
Henry V ◽  
Winter's Tale

Spectres of historical queens in several of Shakespeare’s plays recall the political importance not only of queens themselves, but of the vexed issue of sovereignty as it was gendered in early modern political thought. Representations of and allusions to Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots in Henry V, Henry VIII, and The Winter’s Tale expose the strategies through which actual queens as well as their supporters authorized and defended early modern female sovereignty. At the same time, because female sovereignty rests on the connection between the female body and the political body, definitions of female sovereignty remain unstable, capable of both reinforcing and disrupting the connection. When Shakespeare creates his historical and fictional queens, he raises their spectres as untimely versions of female sovereignty as well as the uncanny role of the female body in representing time itself.

scholarly journals Hedeggerian Thinking and The Role of Memory in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-94
Author(s):  
Chahra Beloufa
Keyword(s):  
The Winter's Tale ◽  
Winter's Tale ◽  
Final Scene ◽  
The Gift

Heidegger’s existentialism goes beyond the limits of the human brain’s functioning where thinking is more than what rationality may generate. In his essay “What is called Thinking?” Heidegger mentions that thinking and thanking are related. This relationship is clarified in Margaret Visser’s The Gift of Thanks, where she describes gratitude emphasizing the role of memory in expressing it. On this basis, one explores how thanking is performed in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale examining both memory and thinking interferences in the course of the characters’ thanking. Leontes sudden jealousy makes him loose all positive thoughts imprisoning Hermione, who expects reward having but obeyed his wishes to convince his friend to stay. After the trial scene, Paulina brings Leontes' recollections into life; by enumerating his wife's amiable personality. In act five, the remorseful king blames himself for his ingratitude. One considers this as the recovery of his memory since “both memory and thanks move their being in the thanc” as Heidegger asserts it. The final scene proves one’s assumption, that to thank is to think where Leontes thanks Paulina graciously by marrying her to his most honest servant Camillo. In short, to utter “thankfulessness would be thoughtlessness”

scholarly journals Maternity and Absence in Shakespearean Romance

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-27
Author(s):  
Helen Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Private Life ◽  
The Winter's Tale ◽  
Winter's Tale ◽  
Ideal Society ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
The Sacrifice ◽  
The Ideal

Abstract The equivocation of the private life of Elizabethan and Jacobean subjects with the public life of monarchy and state endowed mothers with an import, and therefore a power, not previously acknowledged. These changes provoked a fear of female disruption to patriarchal structures which found its way onto Shakespeare’s stage by the representation of mothers as ‘unnatural’ agents of chaos, associated with witchcraft, murder, dangerous ambition, and infidelity; if not by complete absence, which “posits the sacrifice of the mother’s desire as the basis of the ideal society” (Rose, 1991: 313). I suggest that in the late romances, specifically The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, Shakespeare found a form that could demonstrate the complexity of the mother’s position, while still resolving the action with a satisfactory ending that presented a stable continuation of patriarchal lineage. The fathers rely on a fantasy of parthenogenesis to relocate the role of the mother in themselves, ensuring the children are free from her corruptive influence and the bloodlines are safe. However, as all themes return to maternity - chastity, fertility, lineage for example - the fantasy of eradicating the mother is shown to be limited even in the artificial realm of the romance.

Shakespearean Melancholy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. F. Bernard
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
The Winter's Tale ◽  
Twelfth Night ◽  
Winter's Tale ◽  
The Core ◽  
Robert Burton

What’s so funny about melancholy? Iconic as Hamlet is, Shakespearean comedy showcases an extraordinary reliance on melancholy that ultimately reminds us of the porous demarcation between laughter and sorrow. This richly contextualized study of Shakespeare’s comic engagement with sadness contends that the playwright rethinks melancholy through comic theatre and, conversely, re-theorizes comedy through melancholy. In fashioning his own comic interpretation of the humour, Shakespeare distils an impressive array of philosophical discourses on the matter, from Aristotle to Robert Burton, and as a result, transforms the theoretical afterlife of both notions. The book suggests that the deceptively potent sorrow at the core of plays such as The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, or The Winter’s Tale influences modern accounts of melancholia elaborated by Sigmund Freud, Judith Butler, and others. What’s so funny about melancholy in Shakespearean comedy? It might just be its reminder that, behind roaring laughter, one inevitably finds the subtle pangs of melancholy.

The Role of Women in Pursuing Scottish Criminal Actions, 1580–1650

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-250
Author(s):  
Stephanie Dropuljic
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
The Law ◽  
Role Of Women

This article examines the role of women in raising criminal actions of homicide before the central criminal court, in early modern Scotland. In doing so, it highlights the two main forms of standing women held; pursing an action for homicide alone and as part of a wider group of kin and family. The evidence presented therein challenges our current understanding of the role of women in the pursuit of crime and contributes to an under-researched area of Scots criminal legal history, gender and the law.

REGULATION OF MARRIAGE RELATIONS IN THE TURKESTAN REGION

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-32
Author(s):  
Khurshida Tillahodjaeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Family ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
Family And Marriage ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Definition Of

In this article we will talk about the scale of family and marriage relations in the early XX century in the Turkestan region, their regulation, legislation. Clearly reveals the role of women and men in the family, the definition of which is based on the material conditions of society, equality of rights and freedoms and its features.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document