Christopher Marlowes early modern hero, Tamburlaine, The Great is a totalitarian who appears to control every thing and every person on the world-stage with speech-acts. This paper argues that Tamburlaine, The Great Parts 1 and 2 in fact disprove the foundational tenets of the protagonists totalitarian fantasy by exposing the embodied reality behind the myth of performative speech. Tamburlaines tyrannical regime is haunted by the fact that every supposed speech-act does not just become reality through the magic of illocution. The plays use Tamburlaines overidentification as the scourge and wrath of God to reveal that each speech-act actually depends on a constellation of material bodies. Tamburlaine needs dead, objectified bodies to prove that his performative power is legitimate and he needs live bodies to consent to his commands. Marlowes plays show that the limits of the body are the true terms of a sovereigns rule.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-08072012-110233 |
| Date | 08 August 2012 |
| Creators | Castro, Anne Margaret |
| Contributors | Kathryn Schwarz |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-08072012-110233/ |
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