Abstract
As members of a family, siblings act important roles for their family prosperity in both literary works as well as the real world. Conventionally, sibling cordial love and harmonious interactions are extremely respected and advocated by society. This kind of sibling motif was also frequently seen in plays, fairly tales and folk tales. Moreover, prohibited not only by society but also by the one in the literary works, the theme of the sibling incest becomes a caution for those having too intimate sibling interactions.
Similarly, adopting sibling motif as the structure of his two tragedies, The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil, John Webster applies different sibling interactions from those traditional ones. Both of The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil end with the tragic ends--their families become devastated and all brothers and sisters are dead. Applying completely different sibling interactions within his two tragedies, John Webster who abandons all the depictions of harmonious sibling interactions may have his own motivation of presenting this kind of sibling conflict and rivalry. For this reason, the main concern of this thesis is to investigate Webster's motivation of adapting the sibling motif in his two tragedies, The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil and to comprehend his intention of writing this kind of sibling motif.
The first chapter introduces a brief introduction of some critics' comments on Webster's plays, the social contexts of Webster's time and the Renaissance plays, fairy tales and folklore applying the sibling as its motif. The second chapter sketches how the family order was reinforced in the house manuals in the sixteenth century, how John Webster altered the historical events to present the sibling conflict and rivalry instead of the revenge plays. What John Webster presents is the complex sibling relationships, which are based on the marriage, the patriarchal figure and family members, property and the class system. The sibling relationship in The Duchess of Malfi obviously establishes the physical concern more than the psychological concern. The third chapter also points out how Webster elaborates the self-concerned brothers utilize his sister to confirm their social status without care as those in The Duchess of Malfi. After comprehending the sibling relationship based on the physical concern due to the social milieu, we may conclude that Webster¡¦s motivation to arrange the sibling motif not only manifest the evilness of human nature but also satirize the reinforcement of the patriarchal family and family order of Webster¡¦s time. On the whole, the morbid society Webster lived resulted in his depiction on the sibling conflict and rivalry in his two tragedies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0803100-140725 |
| Date | 03 August 2000 |
| Creators | Tsai, Chia-chun |
| Contributors | Yuan-quey Chiou, Shu-fen Chen, I-chun Wang |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0803100-140725 |
| Rights | restricted, Copyright information available at source archive |
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