Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of English, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-07, Section: A, page: 2960. Adviser: Linda Charnes. Title from dissertation home page (viewed Apr. 10, 2008).

<p> This paper aspires to perform an analysis of Early Modern character by thinking of character as a formative process, spanning playwriting to part-learning to dramatic performance. My analysis, which will focus on Shakespeare's <i> Coriolanus</i> and <i>Julius Caesar</i>, dismisses any notion of the Shakespeare play as holistic or complete text. I draw from Tiffany Stern and Simon Palfrey's <i>Shakespeare in Parts</i>, which establishes a methodology for the analysis of "part" or "cue" scripts, texts that feature a single character's lines amputated from the larger play. </p><p> In the Early Modern period, an actor's "part" or "side" would have included his own lines and the cues he needed to know to enter the scene or begin speaking. The part would have been learned in isolation, so the actor would have relied on cues to understand how his role fit into the larger play. I argue that the function of isolated parts and cues, or the last three to five words of any character's lines, is currently underestimated in critical analysis of Shakespeare texts, especially in literary close readings that focus on "character." </p><p> The textual space that Palfrey and Stern label the "cue space" continues to be underestimated, I imagine, because critics still view this space as an overly speculative construct. It is true that we cannot speak concretely about what an Early Modern actor would or would not have done, but we can highlight the implications of a potential performance decision. Cues, sites of stability surrounded by malleability, are ripe with potential performance decisions. By drawing from a methodology grounded in an understanding of parts and cues, we may more clearly contextualize the combative collaboration between actor and playwright through which character is formed.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of English, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-10, Section: A, page: 4308. Adviser: Linda Charnes. Title from dissertation home page (viewed May 19, 2008).

<p> My dissertation explores how sound informs the representation of cross-cultural interactions within early modern drama and travel writing. "Sounding" implies the process of producing music or noise, but it also suggests the attempt to make meaning of what one hears. "Otherness" in this study refers to a foreign presence outside of the listening body, as well as to an otherness that is already inherent within. Sounding otherness enacts a bi-directional exchange between a culturally different other and an embodied self; this exchange generates what I term the sonic uncanny, whereby the otherness interior to the self vibrates with sounds of otherness exterior to the body. The sonic uncanny describes how sounds that are perceived as foreign become familiar through the vibratory touch of the soundwave that attunes a body to its sonic environment or soundscape. Sounds of foreign Eastern and New World Indian otherness become part of English and European travelers; at the same time, these travelers sound their own otherness in Indian spaces. Sounding otherness occurs in the travel narratives of Jean de L&egrave;ry, Thomas Dallam, Thomas Coryate, and John Smith. Cultural otherness is also sounded by the English through their theatrical representations of New World and Oriental otherness in masques including <i>The Masque of Flowers,</i> and plays like Robert Greene's <i>Alphonsus,</i> respectively; Shakespeare's <i> The Tempest</i> combines elements of East and West into a new sound&mdash;"something rich and strange." These dramatic entertainments suggest that the theater, as much as a foreign land, can function as a sonic contact zone.</p>