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The eighteenth century public sphere has been defined by Habermas in terms of its rational, critical style of debate and egalitarian ideals. In eighteenth century America the public sphere comprised mainly elite merchants. This group mediated between civil society and the state in order to influence government decisions. Motivated largely by commercial interests, they nevertheless claimed to represent the entire society. But around the mid-nineteenth century, the American public sphere began to expand, mainly due to the emergence of a middle class. Debate over Shakespearean drama had a profound effect on the ways in which 19th century civil society presented and considered arguments related to public issues. Increasingly, the credibility of an individual's public utterance, rather than his or her social or intellectual status, was of primary import in determining the merit of an argument. The discursive behaviour adopted in discussion of Shakespeare plays in numerous clubs and societies helped to form habits of rational critical debate which characterized public decision-making in the latter part of the century. Those largely excluded from public debate, such as blacks and women, began to publicly argue for rights previously extended only to white males. The major spread of mass entertainment and its perceived ills toward the end of the century, however, rendered Shakespeare the chief weapon in the resistance to modern vulgarity and commercialism. The wedge which developed in Shakespeare discussion between amateurs and academics at this time may be partly explained by a developing mass consumption mentality which Habermas contends segmented the public into protective, specialized minorities and an often uncritical mass of consumers.

No abstract available. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1980.

Through a close analysis of four plays by Shakespeare, this thesis argues that the question of subjectivity ultimately comes to be negotiated around a structural impasse or certain points of opacity in each of the text's signifying practices. Challenging assumptions about the utatively "theatrical" contexts of Richard III, Richard II, Hamlet and Antony and Cleopatra, I argue that, to varying degrees, the specular economy of each play is in fact traversed by a radical alterity that constitutively gives rise to a notion of subjectivity commonly referred to as "Shakespearean". Elaborating upon the work of both Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida, I argue that "subjectivity" in the plays is, rather, the articulated confrontation with a non-dialectizable remainder that haunts each text from within. Crucially in this respect I relate each of the texts to Lacan's account of the "gaze" as a species of what he calls the object a: an alien kernel of jouissance exceeding all subjective mediation yet, paradoxically, also that which confers internal consistency both to subjectivity and to the very process of symbolization as such. I am, moreover, also concerned to read the work of Jacques Derrida as providing an illuminating context for how this incursion of alterity that he terms differance (what Lacan calls the Real) may be read as the unacknowledged support of subjectivity. The thesis concludes with a consideration of how this analysis of the Shakespearean object, rather than succumbing to the heady pleasures of an unfettered textuality, opens, ineluctably, onto a rethinking of the very category of the "political" itself.

Challenging the currently orthodox "New Historicist" conception of Shakespeare's English history plays as a kind of "radically secular" historiography, this thesis attempts to show how Shakespeare's first chronicle play, 1--3HenryVI, was informed by and expressive of Protestant providential historiography. By comparing the texts of the plays with Foxe's Acts and Monuments, the central text of Elizabethan Protestant historiography, the author attempts to show how Foxe's influential history functioned both as an important source for Shakespeare's view of the past in 1--3HenryVI and as a vital intertext in terms of which the play would have been construed as history by Shakespeare's audience. At the heart of this source/intertext dynamic is the figure of Antichrist, a powerful historiographical symbol in Foxe which is adumbrated in Shakespeare's dramaturgy, giving the plays' representation of the violence of the Wars of the Roses era an ineluctably providential character. Having traced the Foxeian intertext in Shakespeare's play, the author concludes by suggesting that, again contrary to the secularizing bent of much recent "New Historicist" criticism, it is precisely because 1--3HenryVI spoke the language of Protestant providential history that Shakespeare's play was significantly "political" in its original late-Elizabethan historical moment.

This dissertation provides a critical, systematic survey of economics in literary theory and practice. Since Aristotle, economic categories have been used as interpretive grounds on which to conceptualize the literary text and distinguish it as a moral or normative sphere. Because economic categories presuppose different norms of individual and social action, the use of a specific category as an interpretive ground generates a particular outlook or moral perspective. / In the first part of the discussion, we critique theories in which the literary text is conceptualized as an economy. After distinguishing three distinct models of the "textual economy," we evaluate them in terms of their logical consistency and normative presuppositions. Selecting the model that is the most logically consistent and normatively valuable, we study two early modern works to see if this model operates as an intentional device implicated in a work's form and content. The works chosen are William Shakespeare's Sonnets and William Bradford's history "Of Plimoth Plantation," both of which display a facination with economic discourse. / The second part of the discussion takes up the question of economics in the theory and practice of putting texts in context. We distinguish four different models of contextualization that depend on economic categories. Explicitly or implicitly, contemporary research agendas and critical positions depend on these categories to situate a literary text in a specific setting. An economic category like exchange, for example, is frequently privileged as a common ground, a shared quality or characteristic used to integrate a text with a context. After critiquing models of contextualization, we synthesize the best they have to offer into a new framework. We then use this framework to situate the texts by Shakespeare and Bradford into the historical settings of their production and reception. The result is a picture of the text in context that is vital, a moving picture, quite unlike the customary still life of artifact and background.

O objetivo desta tese de doutorado é apresentar um mapeamento do texto de A Tempestade, de William Shakespeare, de modo a identificar trechos, desdobramentos do enredo e detalhes intrigantes que possam ser relacionados a uma possível fonte, ou possíveis fontes, a que Shakespeare possa ter tido acesso no processo de elaboração de sua peça, sobre as incursões no Norte da África e no Brasil de Nicolas Durand, Cavalheiro de Villegaignon. Proponho que a ilha de Próspero seja lida como um composto de elementos do Mediterrâneo e do Novo Mundo no qual informações sobre a vida de Villegaignon e sua presença em Argel e na França Antártica (atualmente Rio de Janeiro, Brasil) desempenham papel importante e ainda não completamente explorado pela crítica. Também aponto que o texto de A Tempestade mantém diálogo consistente com fatos biográficos, imagens, o simbolismo e a geografia relacionados à vida do Imperador Carlos V, e a identificação mais completa de Nicolas Durand, Chevalier de Villegaignon pode contribuir para tornar esse nível de referência mais evidente. Também discuto possíveis razões por que uma peça que possui tantos detalhes que se relacionam ao Imperador Carlos V nunca faz referência explícita a esta importante figura histórica. As razões pelas quais tais conexões permaneceram parcialmente despercebidas, ou pelo menos não totalmente exploradas, em um campo de estudo que produz tanto trabalho crítico e editorial como os estudos shakespearianos são apresentadas através do conceito de “invisibilidade brasileira no exterior”, conceito este que caracterizei e busquei formular como uma teoria de recepção cultural de produtos e referências brasileiros no exterior. Busquei ainda uma apresentação de elementos de estudos de fontes anteriores e da fortuna crítica sobre o tema que podem contribuir para uma discussão atualizada das práticas composicionais shakespearianas e de suas repercussões teóricas junto a diferentes vertentes dos estudos shakespearianos como prática de crítica literária. A essa discussão segue-se uma exploração crítica de como o interesse de Shakespeare e sua inquestionável dívida com o ensaio “Sobre os Canibais” de Montaigne poderia ter-se estendido a outros fatos da biografia de Villegaignon que muito provavelmente estavam à disposição do dramaturgo inglês. Minha leitura de A Tempestade foi baseada na única versão da peça de Shakespeare que tem autoridade, aquela publicada no Primeiro Fólio de 1623, e também em contribuições encontradas nas melhores edições críticas modernas da mesma. / The aim of this doctoral thesis is to present a mapping of the text of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest so as to establish textual passages, plot developments, and puzzling details that might be related to a possible source or sources on the North African and Brazilian exploits of Nicolas Durand, Chevalier de Villegaignon to which Shakespeare might have had access in the process of writing the play. I propose that Prospero’s island is a composite of Mediterranean and New World elements in which information about the life of Villegaignon and his presence both in Algiers and in Antarctic France (nowadays Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) plays an important and as yet not fully explored role. I also claim that the text of The Tempest is consistently in dialogue with biographical facts, imagery, symbolism and the geography which relate to the life of The Emperor Charles V, and the full recognition of Nicolas Durand, Chevalier de Villegaignon may contribute to make this broader pattern clearer. I also discuss possible reasons why a play that has so many details that relate to The Emperor Charles V never explicitly refers to such an important historical figure. The discussion of reasons why these connections have remained partially unnoticed or at least not fully explored in a field that generates so much critical and editorial work such as Shakespeare Studies is perfected through a presentation of ‘Brazilian invisibility abroad’, a concept that I have characterised and tried to formulate into a theory of cultural reception of Brazilian cultural products and references abroad. I also presented elements found in previous source studies and the critical fortune of the subject which can contribute to an updated discussion of Shakespearian compositional practice and its theoretical repercussions in different approaches to Shakespeare Studies as literary critical practice. This is followed by an exploration of how Shakespeare’s interest in and indisputable indebtedness to Montaigne’s essay ‘Of the Cannibals’ could have extended to other facts of Villegaignon’s biography that are very likely to have been available to the English playwright. I have based my reading of The Tempest in the only authoritative version of the text, that which was published in the 1623 First Folio, as well as in contributions found in the best modern scholarly editions of the play.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Hispánica / El objetivo central de este informe es estudiar lo patético como procedimiento de la comicidad, aplicado en comedias de Molière y Shakespeare en las cuales se puede apreciar las dos variantes que proponemos como posibles dentro del desarrollo de este mecanismo; lo patético de personaje y lo patético de situación. Para ello, revisamos a los autores que tratan desde distintos puntos de vista algún aspecto específico, como la comedia, lo cómico versus el humor, y la risa, ya que la relación entre ellos abre el espacio para instalar la problemática de lo patético, entendido como una dimensión dolorosa o sufriente que se constituye como un mecanismo para producir un efecto de conmoción del cual surge un tipo de risa especial, distinta de la hilarante.

This thesis attempts to expose stereotypologies of black African skin as performed on the Shakespearean stage and before the Shakespearean camera. My research engages with a number of Tudor/Stuart travel narratives and plays containing imperialistic denigrations of Negritude. To accompany these early revelations of the 'unknown' black Other, I effect a close performative and historical consideration of Shakespeare's Othello (1602). By critiquing the repetitive containment of the character of Othello, the Moor, by successive theatrical ideologies, I work towards a full analysis of his twentieth-century representation on film. Here, through positioning myself within contextual, postcolonial, and methodological discourses surrounding representations of Othello by Orson Welles (1952), Stuart Burge (1965), and five other directors from 1981 to the present day, I confirm and analyse the politicisation of both genuine and masked blackness. In asserting that Welles's ninety-minute statement is powerfully emancipated from white ideological constraint, I nonetheless conclude that the Elizabethan and Jacobean tropes employed in dramatic formulations of black skin retain powerful visual significance within the contemporary film industries that interpret Shakespeare's Moor of Venice.

This thesis attempts to provide an historicised account of excuse-making strategies in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature. This issue is considered, broadly, in the light of the pervasive influence of rhetoric in early modem culture at large, and specifically, as an aspect of the rhetorical construction of moral ambiguity in Shakespearean drama. Its chief concern is with the intractable ambiguity of 'favourable interpretations' or 'charitable constructions' of actions or events, the apparent desirability of which seems beyond doubt. Chapter I uses the 'generosity' often regarded as Shakespeare's own trademark as a way into exploring the aims of the thesis. Its central section focuses more closely on the ambiguity inherent in a 'female rhetoric' of mitigation, apology and extenuation. Where these chapters concentrate on 'covert' excuse-making strategies. Chapter V, by contrast, begins with an exploration of the early modern transformation (or domestication) of classical, female orators into decent, modest, seventeenth-century women. The thesis concludes with an account of Shakespeare's suppliant women, a group of petitioners who are repeatedly represented 'between men'. The persistence of this pattern, I argue, stresses the extent to which excuse-making is gendered, and might be read, as well, as the playwright's own attempt to 'contain' the radical moral ambiguity (radical because as difficult to condone as to condemn) generated by such 'female' excuse-making.