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1
Murray, Deborah A. ""Grammatical laments" in The Duchess of Malfi and The white devil." Thesis, Kansas State University, 1986. http://hdl.handle.net/2097/9940.
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Bloomfield, Jeremy Charles. ""I am Duchess of Malfi still" : the framing of Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi"." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10036/3257.
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This thesis investigates the ways in which Webster’s Duchess of Malfi has been framed and interpreted, selecting various case studies from the four hundred years of the play’s history. It analyses the way in which a number of discourses have been brought to bear upon the play to delimit and shape its meanings, in the absence of a powerful determining author-figure such as Shakespeare. The investigation is organised around three “strands”, or elements which reappear in the commentary on the play. These are “pastness”, the sense that the play is framed as belonging to an earlier era and resistant to being completely interpreted by the later theatrical context being used to reproduce it; “not-Shakespeare”, the way in which Malfi has been set up in opposition to a “Shakespearean” model of dramatic value, or folded into that model; and “the dominance of the Duchess”, the tendency for the central character to act as a focus for the play’s perceived meanings. It identifies and analyses the co-opting of these elements in the service of wildly varying cultural politics throughout the play’s history. Sited within the assumptions and practices of Early Modern performance studies, this thesis constitutes an intervention in the field, demonstrating the possibility of a radically decentred approach. Such an approach is freed from either a reliance on Shakespeare as a prototypical model from which other works are imagined as diverging, or from the progressive narrative of theatre history in which twentieth century scholars “discovered” the true inherent meaning of early modern drama which had been “obscured” by the intervening centuries of theatre practice. It reveals blindspots and weaknesses in the existing Shakespeare-centred conception of the field, and opens up new possibilities for understanding Early Modern drama in historical and contemporary performance.
3
Duncan, Claire McEwen. "The "pretty art" of detecting pregnancy in The Duchess of Malfi." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/36902.
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Why is the pregnant body constructed as a secret to cover up and to uncover in the early modern period, and why, in Webster’s Duchess of Malfi, do apricots uncover this secret? This thesis addresses the odd moment from Webster’s play when the Duchess’s brothers uncover her secret pregnancy by feeding her grafted apricots, causing her premature labour. By examining early modern obstetrical texts, this thesis argues that early modern patriarchal culture appropriated the secrets of the female body in order to control women. In keeping her pregnancy a secret, the Duchess unwittingly produces her brothers’ desire to penetrate that secret. In order to do so, her brothers – particularly Ferdinand – feed her apricots, metaphorically transforming her body into a fruit tree. Early modern botanical texts show that the Duchess’s botanical body legitimates her brothers’ desire to control her. While apricots were not used as a pregnancy test according to early modern obstetrical texts, they could cause premature labour. This thesis sheds new light on the question of incest in Webster’s play, arguing the centrality of a phallic pun that appears in early versions of the play – “apricot” was “apricock.” This pun highlights the penetrative characteristics of the fruit, adding to the evidence of Ferdinand’s incestuous desire: his grafted apricocks penetrate the Duchess’s body and produce (figuratively, at least) her apricock child. Early in the play, Ferdinand is described as a plum tree, and this thesis finds – in the early modern gardening manuals – that apricot trees were most often grafted to plum trees in order to produce fruit. The fruit of the Duchess’s womb, revealed by her brother’s grafted apricocks, is figuratively the fruit of the apricot tree – the Duchess – and the plum tree – her brother Ferdinand.
4
Callaghan, D. C. "The construction of the category of 'woman' in Shakespeare's King Lear and Othello and Webster's The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil." Thesis, University of Sussex, 1986. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.373909.
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This thesis addresses fissures in language, ideology and subjectivity as they are manifested in the dramatic construction of the category of 'Woman' in four major Jacobean texts. The first section of my project deals with the way 1n which the opposition of male and female underlies the perception and construction of order at every level. In a scheme of thought characterized by the use of antithesis and analogy, the opposition of gender proves to be one of the most richly extensible. All analogies are connected by the great chain of thought which consti tutes the Great Chain of Being. Once any element 1n this scheme is undermined there is the danger (or for my purposes, the analytic advantage) that there will be something like a domino ef:ect. That is to say, relations of power become more visible at the problematic i~tersec~ion of gender. In section two, I propose a construction of tragedy rela~2d to female transgression as an alternative to the '.va'! in which feminist critics tend to equate gender with genre, dubbing comedy 'feminine' and tragedy 'masculine.' My construc~ion also counters the ~raditional notion of tragedy as a ~ixed, pr i vi leged genre category. I f',lrther examine the construc~ion of woman in tragedy through absence, silence and utterance. The final sect.ion explores the nature of the cont':'nuous process of gender di£ £erentiation which serves to produce and maintain gender categories. Gender differentiation occurs most manifestly in misogynistic discourse which I address using Lacan I s theory of the construction of the human subject. The production of misogyny in its various forms constructs the feminine as 'Other,' and 1n this its function can be seen as one of policing the boundaries 'of gender ideologies. Here I also treat the construction of masculinity against femininity since the production of the former is dependent upon the latter. The preceding analyses serve to break down unities of gender by recognizlng that discourse simultaneously constructs and disperses concepts of gender. Gender is thus crucial '=.0 the cuI tural dynamic of Renaissance drama, and in this we find authority for new direc~ions in feminis~ literary studies.
5
Denton, Megan. "Beyond Reason: Madness in the English Revenge Tragedy." VCU Scholars Compass, 2013. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/554.
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This paper explores the depiction and function of madness on the Renaissance stage, specifically its development as trope of the English revenge tragedy from its Elizabethan conception to its Jacobean advent through a representative engagement of Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. Madness in these plays selectively departs from popular conceptions and archetypal formulas to create an uncertain dramatic space which allows its sufferers to walk moral lines and liminal paths unavailable to the sane. “Madness” is responsible for and a response to vision; where the revenger is driven to the edge of madness by a lapse in morality only visible to him, madness provides a lens to correct the injustice. It is the tool that allows them to escape convention, decorum and even the law to rout a moral cancer, and, in this capacity, is enabling rather than disabling.
6
Du, Bon-Atmai Evelyn. "Competing Models of Hegemonic Masculinity in English Civil War Memoirs by Women." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2015. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc848084/.
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This thesis examines the descriptions of Royalist and Parliamentarian masculinity in English Civil War memoirs by women through a close reading of three biographical memoirs written by Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle; Lady Ann Fanshawe; and Lucy Hutchinson. Descriptions of masculinity are evaluated through the lens of Raewyn Connell's theory of hegemonic masculinity to understand the impact two competing models of masculinity had on the social and political culture of the period. The prevailing Parliamentarian hegemonic masculinity in English Civil War memoirs is traced to its origins before the English Civil War to demonstrate how hegemonic masculinity changes over time. The thesis argues that these memoirs provide evidence of two competing models of Royalist and Parliamentarian masculinities during the Civil War that date back to changes in the Puritan meaning of the phrase “man of merit”, which influenced the development of a Parliamentarian model of masculinity.
7
Buckingham, John F. "The dangerous edge of things : John Webster's Bosola in context & performance." Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2011. http://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/items/c709add3-5da0-e296-8613-63d74a792f51/9/.
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This thesis argues that there is an enigma at the heart of Webster's The Duchess of Malfi; a disjunction between the critical history of the play and its reception in performance. Historical disquiet about the status of the play among academics and cultural commentators has not prevented its popularity with audiences. It has, however, affected some of the staging decisions made by theatre companies mounting productions. Allied to other practical factors, these have impacted significantly – and occasionally disastrously – upon performances. It is argued that Webster conceived the play as a meditation on degree and, in aiming to draw out the maximum relevance from the social satire, deliberately created the multi-faceted performative role of Bosola to work his audience in a complex and subversive manner. The role's purpose was determined in response to the structural discontinuity imposed upon the play by the physical realities of staging within the Blackfriars' auditorium. But Webster also needed an agent to serve the plot's development and, in creating the role he also invented a character, developed way beyond the material of his sources. This character proved as trapped as any other in the play by the consequences of his own moral choices. Hovering between role and character, Webster's creation remains liminally poised on ‘the dangerous edge of things.' Part One explores the contexts in which Webster created one of the most ambiguous figures in early modern drama - subverting stock malcontent, villain and revenger - and speculates on the importance of the actor, John Lowin in its genesis. It includes a subsequent performance history of the role. Part Two presents the detailed analysis of a range of professional performances from the past four decades, attempting to demonstrate how the meaning of the play has been altered by decisions made regarding the part of Bosola.
8
Lin, Jingshu, and 林靜淑. "The Mirror of Royal Spectacle in The Duchess of Malfi and Life Is a Dream." Thesis, 1997. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/51183048596673544484.
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碩士國立中央大學
英美語文學系
85
In this thesis, I will present self-reflexive specularity and gross materialityas two representations of the seventeenth century royal power. I will alsodiscuss the roayl power displayed in Las Meninas , a seventeenth century Spanish painting by Diego Velasquez.In chapter one, I will discuss how Webster, in The Duchess of Malfi, presents royal power through grotesque images. Royal spectacle is portrayed as a reaffirmation of transcendental sovereignty. Ferdinand's fascination with grotesque images explains his inability to transcend the physical order and develop a self-reflexive capacity. Specifically, I will examine Ferdinand's doubling projection of identity onto his sister and how this projection is related to his obsession with the ghastly and the obscene to produce effects of horror and tortures of the Duchess as manifestations of his sovereignty.In chapter two, I will examine how Calderon, in Life Is a Dream, develops the self-reflexive mode of royal power through dream mechanism. Self-reflexive speculation is a perspectival invention which is concerned with the confrontation between the king and his subjects. This perspectival device does not take royal identity as divine entity or a transcendental signifier, rather,it is a self- conscious subjectivity which results from the king's confrontation with his subjects. It depicts royal spectacle as a reciprocal game between the king and his subjects. I will also discuss the development of self-reflexive capacity in Segismund which makes him curb his violent actions.Las Meninas is introduced into this thesis to portray a pictorial representation of self-reflexive mode of royal power. In this painting, through the vanishing point or the mirror, Velasquez disintegrates the anteriority of things and divine kingship. We will also see reciprocal interactions between the painter, the reflected figures in the mirror, and the spectators.From Las Meninas, The Duchess of Malfi, and Life Is a Dream, we can see how the seventeenth century royal spectacle not only illustrates its fascination with gross materiality and physical projection of royal image, but also contains metaphysical meditations upon the king's body as well.
9
Wu, HsiangChun, and 吳香君. "Family- And Self-Fashioning: Tragic Conflict In Romeo And Juliet And The Duchess Of Malfi." Thesis, 2012. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/42392777982272220226.
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碩士靜宜大學
英國語文學系
100
William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi abound with a host of accidents and coincidences. There are so many such chance occurrences that critics hold that the Wheel of Fortune must be what controls the protagonists’ fate. This thesis aims to refute the prevailing critical analysis that the tragedies arise under the concept of the Wheel of Fortune. By applying Stephen Greenblatt’s new historicism and his concept of Renaissance Self-Fashioning, the thesis explores the two female protagonists’ strong self-fashioning behavior in relationship with their families’ family-fashioning drive for power and influence in these two plays. The thesis considers that the resulting conflict between the two types of fashioning is what triggers both protagonists’ tragic end. The thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter One introduces the Italian historical background that both English playwrights used for the setting. The socio-political conditions influence both the main and minor characters’ thought and action. Chapter Two explains Stephen Greenblatt’s theory of new historicism and links it to Michel Foucault’s power discourse, and other theorists’ concepts of the ideal self-fashioning. Chapter Three manifests how family-fashioning dominates the two female protagonists’ thought, behavior, and identities. Chapter Four examines how the two heroines shape themselves to revolt against the mighty force of family-fashioning and how devious minor characters, also with a strong will to refashion themselves, are implicated in the heroines’ downfall. With the overall review, the thesis concludes that the tragic outcome springs from the conflicting desires emerging during the age of the Renaissance: the family desire for wealth and power and the individual will for self-determination. The misfortunes thus cannot be attributed to the Wheel of Fortune but ironically to the social conditions and conflicting thoughts fashionable during the period.
10
Tsai, Chia-chun, and 蔡佳君. "The Sibling RelationshipIn John Webster’s Two Tragedies: The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi." Thesis, 2000. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/83370034544733113236.
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碩士國立中山大學
外國語文學系研究所
88
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.
11
Arlen, Hillary. "Intersections of violence and power in The Duchess of Malfi and the Changeling institutional struggles, individual victims /." 1996. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/35551266.html.
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Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1996.Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 64-65).
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Juan, Wei-hua, and 阮偉華. "Power, Material Desire and Male Characters in Arden of Faversham, The Changeling, and The Duchess of Malfi." Thesis, 2014. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/9unufw.
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碩士國立中山大學
外國語文學系研究所
102
This thesis aims to explore men’s desire for material and power. The scope will be three English Renaissance plays, Arden of Faversham, The Changeling, and The Duchess of Malfi. From the late Middle Ages to early modern England, feudalism gradually dissolved but not entirely disappeared and the state authority grew stronger and steadier. The nobility who used to dominate their fiefdoms found London a route for them to obtain power and access to royalty. Early capitalism moreover complicated the power struggles. During the 15th and 16th centuries, England’s foreign trade started flourishing and the foreign demand for English wool soared high; thus, the wool industry, along with various export industries, became profitable. Besides, the enclosure law reveals that other than certain aristocrats who were granted to lands by the king, the wealthy could buy lands to develop their own career. Nevertheless, wealth might help people climb social ladder but might also have them become corrupted, while they are driven by the desire to obtain power. William Shakespeare once said, “All the world’s a stage / And all the men and women merely players” (As You Like It 2.7.138-9). Such dark sides of the Renaissance society were reflected in the plays, such as Arden of Faversham, The Changeling, and The Duchess of Malfi, and each of them reveals class conflict and material desire. Many scholars have chosen these plays as research sources and focus on female autonomy or explore female characters’ consciousness. However, in my thesis I would like to use cultural studies to examine three Renaissance plays. This thesis will discuss men’s desire and struggle for power, which relentless victimize those reckless and inexperienced women. In Chapter One I will introduce the development of early capitalism in English Renaissance. Besides this, this thesis examines the phenomenon in which the lower-class people tried to climb to higher ranks, and the upper class desired to own far greater power. Chapter Two discusses not only the inferior’s desire for wealth but also a middle-class man’s aspiration to obtain greater power and wealth in Arden of Faversham. Furthermore, I will lead the discussion to Foucault’s power relation in which the Power of patriarchy and individual desires becomes in conflict with each other. Chapter Three moves to The Changeling and explore Vermandero’s servant, De Flores, and his sexual desire. Eventually, he dragged down and controlled his master’s daughter, Beatrice-Joanna. Furthermore, men’s anxiety about the challenges to patriarchy will also be discussed. Chapter Four discusses how the two royal brothers, Ferdinand and the Cardinal in The Duchess of Malfi, try to manipulate their widow sister in order to maintain their power. In the conclusive part of this thesis, I discuss men’s pursuit of power and material desire.
13
Mei-yui, Kuo, and 郭美玉. "The Female Body and the Male Order of Things in The Duchess of Malfi and The Revengre's Tragedy." Thesis, 2002. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/59967045137077647945.
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碩士國立中央大學
英美語文研究所
90
Abstract This thesis mainly considers the female body in early modern society. The female body has been the object of study in drama on the one hand and the object of surveillance both in the family and in the theater of anatomy on the other hand. It has been regarded as the object of fear, which is always the disruptive power to the family and society. While it is regarded as what Bakhtin calls the grotesque body, which always transgresses its prescribed limits, the continuance of the family and the principle of primogeniture hinge on the female version of what Bakhtin calls the classic body. The duplicity of the female body initiates my reading of the female body in The Duchess of Malfi and in The Revenger’s Tragedy. Chapter one reviews three historicized accounts of the body, as it was understood in early modern society: M. M. Bakhtin’s classic and grotesque bodies, G. M. Paster’s humoral body and Thomas Laqueur’s one-sex / one flesh model. In addition, I discuss the performance of the female body in the theater of early modern anatomy with a view to understanding how the female body becomes the object of knowledge and how the pursuit of that knowledge is related to the place of the female body in the familial and social structures. Chapter two argues that the lying-in chamber serves as the site of inversion of the patriarchal prerogatives. I read the childbearing scene as the scene in which the classic body is transformed into the grotesque body. Chapter three discusses the dead female body in relation to the family integrity. I argue how the female body, though dead, serves to authorize male epistemology and how that epistemology functions to protect the family integrity. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the relation between the theatrics of the public anatomical demonstration and the dramatics of tragedy. While the fragmented female body on stage challenges its audience to know who it is, it continues to confuse them. While the man who displays it attempts to transform it into “the corpus of mental categories,” it acts its own part, telling what is so special about both his body and hers in the two plays. Key Words: the female body, womb, the lying-in chamber, childbearing, death, anatomy
14
Hsu, Liangfong, and 徐良鳳. "The Care of the Self in The Duchess of Malfi, The Roaring Girl, and The Maid of Honor." Thesis, 2006. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/71687241307109245903.
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博士國立中山大學
外國語文學系研究所
94
This dissertation aims to explore the practice of the care of the self in three Renaissance plays by means of Michel Foucault’s theory of the technologies of the self derived from the Greco-Roman ethics of the care of the self. Foucault asserts that the Greek ethics of the care of the self offers a beneficial viewpoint to the modern investigation of freedom outside of sexual liberation. This study first constructs the guiding principles for the possible realization of the Greco-Roman ethics of the care of the self in other epochs, especially the early modern era. The technologies of the self are interconnected with the technologies of power, and their contact point resides in governmentality. The subject is shaped by the governing schema of the ruling authorities while concurrently being modified by the self through self-government. The subject must comprehend the governing tactics of the authorities in order not to be governed too much and can further govern other people for personal purposes. To be able to do so is to be equipped with a philosophical ethos of critique, which can be executed in three perspectives: thought – an attitude of criticism, action – the plebian quality, and words – the practice of parrhesia. The study then applies the aforementioned guiding principles to discuss the three heroines in terms of the four aspects proposed by Foucault in the relationship to the self: the determination of the ethical substance, the mode of subjection, the means of ethical works, and the telso of the ethical subject. It investigates how the three heroines of different social statuses – aristocrat, citizen, gentry –fulfill the practice of the care of the self through various strategies and unconventional life styles.
15
Engeler-Young, Sarah Ruth. "Policing representational prostitution some feminist, revisionist suggestions for conveying the costs of female transgression in The duchess of Malfi and 'Tis pity she's a whore /." 1995. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/32904851.html.
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Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1995.Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-53).
16
Van, Note Beverly Marshall. "Performing Women’s Speech in Early Modern Drama: Troubling Silence, Complicating Voice." Thesis, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2010-08-8327.
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This dissertation attempts to fill a void in early modern English drama studies by
offering an in-depth, cross-gendered comparative study emphasizing representations of
women’s discursive agency. Such an examination contributes to the continuing critical
discussion regarding the nature and extent of women’s potential agency as speakers and
writers in the period and also to recent attempts to integrate the few surviving dramas by
women into the larger, male-dominated dramatic tradition.
Because statements about the nature of women’s speech in the period were
overwhelmingly male, I begin by establishing the richness and variety of women’s
attitudes toward marriage and toward their speech relative to marriage through an
examination of their first-person writings. A reassessment of the dominant paradigms of
the shrew and the silent woman as presented in male-authored popular drama—including
The Taming of the Shrew and Epicene—follows. Although these stereotypes are not
without ambiguity, they nevertheless considerably flatten the contours of the historical
patterns discernable in women’s lifewriting. As a result, female spectators may have experienced greater cognitive dissonance in reaction to the portrayals of women by boy
actors. In spite of this, however, they may have borrowed freely from the occasional
glimpses of newly emergent views of women readily available in the theater for their
own everyday performances, as I argue in a discussion of The Shoemaker’s Holiday and
The Roaring Girl.
Close, cross-gendered comparison of two sets of similarly-themed plays follows:
The Duchess of Malfi and The Tragedy of Mariam, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream
and Love’s Victory. Here my examination reveals that the female writers’ critique of
prevailing gender norms is more thorough than the male writers’ and that the emphasis
on female characters’ material bodies, particularly their voices, registers the female
dramatists’ dissatisfaction with the disfiguring representations of women on the maledominated
professional stage.
I end with a discussion of several plays by women—The Concealed Fancies, The
Convent of Pleasure, and Bell in Campo—to illustrate the various revisions of marriage
offered by each through their emphasis on gendered performance and, further, to suggest
the importance of the woman writer’s contribution to the continuing dialectic about the
nature of women and their speech.
17
Lodhia, SHEETAL. "Material Self-Fashioning and the Renaissance Culture of Improvement." Thesis, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1974/1513.
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This dissertation argues that in Renaissance discourses of the body the body is progressively evacuated of the spirit, as we move from texts of the late Medieval period to texts of the Jacobean period. Where New Historicists have suggested that the practice of “self-fashioning,” which dictates behaviour, speech and dress, takes place in the Renaissance, I argue that there was a material self-fashioning of the body occurring simultaneously. Such corporeal fashioning, motivated by desire for physical improvement, frustrates the extent to which the soul shapes the body. My Introduction lays theoretical and historical groundwork, situating the body/soul relationship in relation to Christian theology, Senecan-Stoicism, Epicureanism and philosophical materialism. Discourses of artistic creation, informed by neo-Platonism, also influence corporeal fashioning in that the most radical bodily modifications are imagined through literature, where artificers are often privileged as creators. Chapter One examines “The Miracle of the Black Leg,” a transplant, by the doctor-Saints Cosmas and Damian, of a Moor’s black leg to a white Sacristan, whose gangrenous leg is amputated. In written and pictorial representations Cosmas and Damian, initially figured as Saints, are later presented as doctors who perform a medical procedure. Alongside the doctors’ increasing agency, the black leg itself, inflected by Renaissance notions of Moors and Moorishness, troubles the soul’s immanence in the body. Chapter Two examines Elizabeth I’s practices of bodily fashioning through her wigs, dentures and cosmetics. I argue that Elizabeth’s symbolic value, which includes components of monarchical rule, as well as attitudes toward female beauty, is always already pre-empted by her body. In Book III of The Faerie Queene, moreover, Edmund Spenser writes an alternative history of England through Britomart’s body to provide an heir to Elizabeth’s otherwise heirless throne. Chapters Three and Four perform close readings of Book II of The Faerie Queene, Thomas Tomkis’s Lingua, Thomas Middleton’s The Maiden’s Tragedy and Revenger’s Tragedy, and John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. I argue that both the allegorical and theatrical modes demand a level of materialism that paradoxically makes the body the centre of attention, and anticipates Cartesian mechanistic dualism.Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-25 22:59:31.67