The increasing cultural authority of writers in the seventeenth century fosters the growth of many modern notions of authorship. I argue that the myth of the poet/musician Orpheus, whose skillful words civilized 'savage' early humans, provides the model for this more powerful role. The Orpheus myth intersects with key emerging discourses: the dynastic state and the nation-state, patronage and print, and gender and sexuality. Pursuit of Orphic laureateship emerges as a common thread in the careers of three very different poets, the professional and patronage writers John Dryden and Ben Jonson, and the anti-monarchist and scholar John Milton. In arguing for an Orphic laureate, I use evidence from Jonson's, Milton's, and Dryden's texts to establish the existence of a larger cultural pattern in the early modern period. I consider the Protestant embrace of text over ritual and the advent of print culture in conjunction with the application of musical theory in contemporary scientific discourses of medicine, political science, and rhetoric to establish the theoretical foundation for how Orphic magic influences human actions through music and texts. The ambiguities of the shift from patronage to print allow the Orphic laureates to magnify the threat of political censorship while using the new authority of critical expertise to reallocate this power to the academy. At the center of this effort are the formalization of the office of poet laureate and proposals to centralize cultural authority in a British Academy presided over by the chief critic, the laureate. The concept of the Orphic laureate also connects with Orpheus's reputation after his wife's death as a hater of women and the originator of male homosexuality. Laureates begin the later move toward biologically-based gender difference by reworking the traditional associations of women with the magic of creation and offering Orphic magic as the masculine, civilizing force that contains and shapes feminine Nature. One important result of these efforts is the trend among male writers to create all-male professional genealogies for themselves, lists that have formed many of our notions about canonicity and literary standards / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_23686 |
| Date | January 1997 |
| Contributors | Appert, Lucile Griffin (Author), Roach, Joseph (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
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