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published_or_final_version / Literary Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Literary Studies / Master / Master of Arts

No description available.

This study explores the presentation of transgressive, effective and erotic relationships in a selected group of early modern plays as those relationships relate to the English Renaissance ideal of marriage and sexuality expressed in religious and secular tracts. The depictions of illicit love and sexuality in these plays reveal problematic social and moral issues inherent in the construction of the English Renaissance ideal of love and marriage. Not only do the dramatists reveal the tension between transgressive and normative love and sexuality, but they do so through the use of aesthetic forms that transgress conventional dramatic structure. This dissertation contends that the unconventional dramatic representation of transgression functions as a cognitive mode for the audience in their understanding of the practical social reality associated with the abstract ideality of love and marriage. Focussing on a selected plays of English Renaissance dramatists William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, Thomas Heywood, John Ford, and two anonymous playwrights, I suggest that the dramatists refuse to condemn or condone the transgression. Rather, they endow it with meaning, and while not rescinding the ideal love and sexuality, offer possible ways of accommodating it.

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The purpose of this study was to arrive at conclusions regarding the nature and background of the anonymous playwright of the medieval morality play Mankind (composed c. 1470). The presumed audience for this study is the group of readers who criticize, produce, or perform medieval English drama. An analysis was conducted according to the precepts of classical rhetoric as it appeared in the dialogue of the evil characters Nought, New-Guise, Nowadays, Mischief, and Titivillus. The lines of these characters were closely read for clues as to the rhetorical perspective of the playwright.In addition to the classical evidence, the study gathered textual evidence of Germanic pagan influences upon the playwright. The researcher arrived at the conclusion that the classical and Germanic influences were significant in the playwright's choice of actions and dramatic devices. The study includes a review of literature and a synopsis of the action of the play.

A complete study of the principle would take into consideration other literary types besides the drama, but since, historically, the drama takes precedence over those other types, and since the first important controversy on the subject arose in England in connection with tragedy, I have considered it best to limit the material undertaken here to that form of dramatic art. Further than that, the study will be limited to some of the leading tragedies of the Elizabethian age, excluding those of Shakespeare, for it was the use or misuse of poetic justice in these plays which formed the basis of the famous Dennis-Addison controversy in the early eighteenth century. Poetic justice had become a highly formalized idea by that time, and Addison became a defender of the liberties of the dramatist and insisted that the reputation of English writers of tragedy should not be injured by the enforcement of such an arbitrary rule as Den is and his fellow critic proposed. Since that time, the field over which the battle of the theory might be waged has decreased in size. Shakespeare is no longer condemned for having brought Desdemona to an unhappy death. The moder, especially, has turned from the old accepted idea of “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall also be reap”, and has taken a particular pleasure in turning it upside down. How we see that there is no planned plot for our lives. The narrow sense of tragedy that once held us when we saw justice overtake him who deserved his fate has given way before another sense of tragedy, one which apprehends that perhaps the greatest tragedy may be founded upon the very inscrutability of our lives. We no longer believe in the old dogma of poetic justice. Even so, poetic justice, whether it be modern or ancient, always has the fundamental problem of art with which to contend. That problem is, rightly enough, should it be the purpose of art to please, or to instruct? Dependent upon the answer to this question, is another problem: should the principle of poetic justice be accepted or rejected? Only this much may be said: it seems reasonable to expect that the absolute conformity to a strict form of poetic justice would injure the best interests of art and aesthetics as badly as the absolute violation of the doctrine would affect the conception of morality. A compromise seems inevitable.

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