"The winter's tale": Leontes' derangement and the chronotope of melancholy

Thumbnail
Name:
Wood_D_2000.pdf
Size:
88.73Mb
Format:
PDF
Download
Author
Wood, David Houston
Metadata
Show full item record
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/11122/6739
Abstract
To recent critical formulations regarding melancholy and its role in the Renaissance humoral body, this project contributes the argument that melancholy's trajectory from its natural to its unnatural state carries with it a fundamental shift in temporal-senses. I illustrate this shift through close analysis of Leontes' derangement in Shakespeare's 'The winter's tale.' Based on Renaissance physiological texts, as well as modern psychoanalytic, anthropological, and gender studies, I explore how melancholy's inherent volatility signifies the masculine anxieties of early modern English patriarchy. I argue that melancholy's bifurcated temporal-senses serve to clarify the subjectivity of Renaissancee passions.
Description
Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2000
Table of Contents
Introduction -- ch.1. "to be boy eternal": honor, honesty, and narcissistic shame in "The winter's tale" -- ch.2. "Hysterica passio": melancholy, madness, and the anxiety of gender in "The winter's tale" -- ch.3. "I could afflict you farther": melancholy, jealousy, and chronotopic derangement in "The winter's tale" -- "Works cited.
Date
2000-05
Type
Thesis
Collections