Resisting Translation: Britomart in Book 3 of Spenser’s Faerie Queene

2020 ◽  
pp. 173-210
Author(s):  
Harry Berger
Keyword(s):  
Faerie Queene ◽  
The Witch

This chapter examines the manifestation of the “castration principle” in the legend of Britomart. Its power is explicitly invested not only in the allegorical and magical violence of antipoetic scapegoats—the witch, Proteus, and Busirane—but also in the apparently benign patrons of patriarchal order and continuity. Britomart's violent awakening to love, her induction into the heterosexual regime of the translatio imperii, is presided over by Merlin, an agent whose motives and career are shown to be dominated by gynephobia and the fantasy of castration.

The Manifestation of Desire

2021 ◽  
pp. 120-147
Author(s):  
Kent Cartwright
Keyword(s):  
Causal Power ◽  
Faerie Queene ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
The Witch ◽  
The Faerie Queene ◽  
The Way

Chapter 4 conceptualizes the device of ‘manifestation,’ the term identifying the causal power of desires, thoughts, and words to call forth objects and even characters in Shakespeare’s comic world. In the spirit of critic Elena Zupančič, the device shows, among other things, the way that comedy can surface the amusing monstrousness and presumptuousness of human wishes. The concept of manifestation entails various literary and dramatic values that characterize Shakespearean comedy. Historically, it reflects interests and theories found in Renaissance treatises on magic, and it even parallels certain modern-day linguistic patters. The chapter formalizes and theorizes the device, drawing examples from a range of comedies. The Comedy of Errors (Dr. Pinch), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Helana and the love potion), and The Merry Wives of Windsor (the Witch of Brainford) come in for special discussion. The chapter ends by situation manifestation in relation to entrance effects in medieval and Tudor drama and to allegorical effects in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.

The Faerie Queene

1970 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Faerie Queene ◽  
The Faerie Queene

Rangda and the Goddess Durga in Bali

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-77
Author(s):  
Sarah Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Binary Opposition ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Purity And Impurity ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Negative Attributes ◽  
The Way

This article examines Rangda and her role as a chthonic and mythological figure in Bali, particularly the way in which Rangda’s identity has intertwined with that of the Hindu goddess Durga— slayer of buffalo demons and other creatures that cannot be bested by Shiva or other male Hindu gods. Images and stories about Durga in Bali are significantly different from those found in Hindu contexts in India. Although she retains the strong-willed independence and decision-making capabilities prominently associated with Durga in India, in Bali the goddess Durga is primarily associated with violent and negative attributes as well as looks and behaviours that are more usually associated with Kali in India. The reconstruction of Durga in Bali, in particular the integration of Durga with the figure of the witch Rangda, reflects the local importance of the dynamic relationship between good and bad, positive and negative forces in Bali. I suggest that Balinese representations of Rangda and Durga reveal a flux and transformation between good and evil, not simply one side of a balanced binary opposition. Transformation—here defined as the persistent movement between ritual purity and impurity—is a key element in the localization of the goddess Durga in Bali.

La otredad: ¿real o inventada? El caso de las brujas

1999 ◽  
pp. 21-33
Author(s):  
Elia Nathan Bravo
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
Empirical Content ◽  
Extreme Situation ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
The One ◽  
In Virtue Of

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. On the one hand, it offers a general analysis of stigmas (a person has one when, in virtue of its belonging to a certain group, such as that of women, homosexuals, etc., he or she is subjugated or persecuted). On the other hand, I argue that stigmas are “invented”. More precisely, I claim that they are not descriptive of real inequalities. Rather, they are socially created, or invented in a lax sense, in so far as the real differences to which they refer are socially valued or construed as negative, and used to justify social inequalities (that is, the placing of a person in the lower positions within an economic, cultural, etc., hierarchy), or persecutions. Finally, I argue that in some cases, such as that of the witch persecution of the early modern times, we find the extreme situation in which a stigma was invented in the strict sense of the word, that is, it does not have any empirical content.

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