The Female Tragic Hero in English Renaissance Drama

Liebler, Naomi Conn

doi:10.1007/978-1-137-04957-5

Cited by 26 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Woodbridge points out that Ferdinand 'fetishizes body parts, but instead of emblazoning them in sonnets, he tends to cut them off bodies and carry them around -a dead man's hand, the leg of a man'. 5 Following Jankowski, Sara Morrison argues that the Duchess recognizes that Ferdinand's various forms of psychological torture -many of which rely on images of bodily fragmentation -have the potential to transform both her sense of self and her physicality; as Morrison aptly puts it, the Duchess understands 'interior states can be worn on the body'. 6 According to Morrison, the Duchess resists such torment by embracing a sense of physical and mental integrity.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Do Things with Organs: Moving Parts in <i>The Duchess of Malfi</i>

Biggie

2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article analyzes the agency of mobile organs and parts in John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. While criticism on the individuated part in the play has primarily focused on Ferdinand's blazonic renderings of the Duchess’s body, I argue that the Duchess reappropriates her brother’s language and develops what I refer to as a rhetoric of intercorporeal exchange. For the Duchess, the exchange of unruly parts — organs and spirits that leave one body to enter another — has desirable rather than disastrous effects, allowing her to merge metaphysically with Antonio. In its allusions to Neoplatonism and theories of hidden sympathies, the play, I argue, dramatizes a conception of humoral subjectivity that was inextricably linked to the exchange of itinerant and invasive parts.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%