Material Grief: Death and the Centrality of Objects in Early Modern Drama

本论文将研究詹姆士王朝复仇悲剧中“女性”暴力的一系列戏剧表现，主要有三个目的：1)对早期现代戏剧中表现女性气质的悖论进行分类。也就是说，质疑戏剧如何呈现和/或试图调和戏剧上活跃的女性与女性的理想化定义，即被动的，静态的，被降级到家庭空间。在这样做的过程中，我试图对持续的文化矛盾施加特别的压力，在这种矛盾中，女性一直与戏剧性联系在一起，但却被禁止出现在舞台上。2)使用与女性相关的暴力行为作为案例研究，以阐明围绕身体本体和身体完整性的特定焦虑，代理的本质，以及区分人类主体与物质客体的问题。3)从理论上解释为什么戏剧（尤其是剧中的女性角色）为巩固和探索文化焦虑和悖论提供了一个特别合适的媒介。在这方面，该项目将探索戏剧文本如何与其他当代文本、艺术品和文化文物建立互惠关系，这些文本经常与戏剧（特别是徽章书籍、反化妆品论文、新教论战、解剖学话语和死亡纪念传统）进行持续的类比参考。

This thesis will investigate a range of theatrical manifestations of 'feminine' violence in Jacobean Revenge Tragedy, with three principal aims:1) To develop a taxonomy of the paradoxes of representing femininity in the Early Modern theatre. Namely, to question how the drama presents and/ or attempts to reconcile representations of theatrically active women with idealised definitions of the feminine as passive, static, and relegated to domestic spaces. In doing so, I seek to put particular pressure on the sustained cultural contradiction by which women are consistently associated with theatricality, and yet barred from appearing on the stage.2) To use the presentation of acts of violence associated with women as a case study, in order to elucidate particular anxieties surrounding the ontology of bodies and bodily integrity, the nature of agency, and the question of what distinguishes human subjects from materialobjects.3) To theorise as to why drama (and especially female figures in this drama) provided a particularly apt medium for consolidating and exploring cultural anxieties and paradoxes. In this, the project will explore how dramatic texts enter into a reciprocal relationship with other contemporary texts, art-objects and cultural artefacts, which often make sustained analogical reference to the theatre (in particular, emblem books, anti-cosmetic treatises, protestant polemics, anatomical discourse, and memento mori traditions).