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Narcissism and Suicide in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries
Abstract
The subjects of this book are the subjects whose subjects are themselves. Narcissus so himself himself forsook, And died to kiss his shadow in the brook. In accusing the introspective Adonis of narcissistic self-absorption, Shakespeare's Venus employs a geminative construction-'himself himself'-that provides a keynote for this study of Renaissance reflexive subjectivity. Through close analysis of a number of Shakespearean texts-including Venus and Adonis, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and Othello- this book illustrates how radical self-reflection is expressed on the Renaissance page and stage, and how representations of the two seemingly extreme figures of the narcissist and self-slaughterer are indicative of early modern attitudes to introspection. Encompassing a broad range of philosophical, theological, poetic, and dramatic texts, this study examines period descriptions of the early modern subject characterized by the rhetoric of reciprocation and reflection. The narcissist and the self-slaughter provide models of dialogic but self-destructive identity where private interiority is articulated in terms of self-response, but where this geminative isolation is understood as self-defeating, both selfish and suicidal. The study includes work on Renaissance revisions of Ovid, classical attitudes to suicide, the rhetoric of friendship literature, discussion of early modern conceptions of vision, and an extended discussion of narcissism in the epyllion tradition. Sustained textual analysis offers new readings of major Shakespearean texts, allowing familiar works of literature to be seen from the unusual and anti-social perspectives of their narcissistic and suicidal protagonists.
This is the first comprehensive study of sympathy in the early modern period, providing a deeply researched and interdisciplinary examination of its development in Anglophone literature and culture. It argues that the term sympathy was used to refer to an active and imaginative sharing of affect considerably earlier than previous critical and historical accounts have suggested. Investigating a wide range of texts and genres, including prose fiction, sermons, poetic complaint, drama, political tracts, and scientific treatises, Richard Meek demonstrates the ways in which sympathy in the period is bound up with larger debates about society, religion, and identity. He also reveals the extent to which early modern emotions were not simply humoral or grounded in the body, but rather relational, comparative, and intertextual. This volume will be of particular interest to scholars and students of Renaissance literature and history, the history of emotions, and the history and philosophy of science.
Lucretius’s poem De rerum natura articulates a philosophy meant to help its adherents avoid anxiety and inner turmoil. Although Shakespeare was acquainted with and influenced by Lucretius, scholarship has neglected this influence upon Hamlet, a play whose title character is most famous for inner turmoil and melancholy. This essay argues that that the play has a Lucretian aspect, such that classical materialism is reflected in its tapestry of metaphysical anxieties. Besides Christian concerns about the afterlife, Prince Hamlet’s suffering may also, therefore, be understood in the context of a Lucretian ethics and science. Lucretius propounded a materialist view of the soul, and viewed death as the separation of the atoms of body and soul from each other. Thus, this essay points out certain scenes in the play which suggest or investigate atomic decomposition. In particular, the Gravedigger scene represents Lucretian-materialist attitudes toward death.
This article aims to analyze the discourse of cursing and gender performance in Shakespeare's Richard III (1592) through Judith Butler's theory of gender as a performative act in conjunction with J. L. Austin's concept of performative utterances, in order to further a cultural understanding of the beliefs surrounding curses in early modern England. I deploy Richard III as a case study to demonstrate that speech-act theory is applicable in a dramatic text, a context that Austin failed to consider when he theorized illocutionary acts. Since the construction of feminine identities in Richard III is based on performance–in early modern England boy actors impersonated female figures vocally and physically, I argue that curses are gendered feminine despite the fact that cursing women transgress the conventional feminine virtue of silence and despite the cultural belief that curses produce agency of which women are conventionally deprived. As such, the discourse of female cursing can be read as a case of minor literature, a mode of enunciation that challenges and eclipses Richard's discourse, and which emanates from the conventional view that the female curse is a performative speech act that is divinely endorsed. It is an effective means of retaliation, leading to the destruction of villainous figures.
For early modern men and women, striving for full self-knowledge was a religious obligation—and achieving it was an impossibility. On the one hand, following Augustine, the quest for self-knowledge was conceived as coterminous with the quest for God. On the other, as a range of sceptical and Reformed authors—from Montaigne to Hooker—argued, true self-knowledge was thought to pose an insurmountable challenge precisely because of what might initially seem to be an epistemic advantage: that is, the proximity of the self to the self. In the Reformed tradition, I argue, this scepticism about the self’s intelligibility was levied for pastoral ends as a source of comfort and reassurance, introducing an element of welcome doubt to temper the blistering certainties of Calvinist predestination. The second half of the chapter explores the highly visceral, sensory terms in which authors frequently describe the pursuit of self-knowledge. I focus in particular on early modern iterations of an ancient analogy comparing the soul to an eye which cannot see itself. For Sir John Davies in his poem Nosce Te Ipsum (1599), self-knowledge is (paradoxically) predicated on a productive form self-estrangement. Poetic language is instrumental here, as metaphor works to make the soul extraordinary to itself, untethering it from its own illusory over-familiarity. Such analogies articulate or ‘make visible’ the limits of our knowledge: they function as a means of expressing, and thereby knowing, human ignorance.
General Othello's trustworthy companion and advisor Iago makes the Moor 'mad' in William Shakespeare's "Othello". He causes the ruin of quite a few characters in the play because of his uncontrollable jealousy and a feeling of revenge. Iago takes the help of his ally named Roderigo in order to translate his own destructive dreams into reality. Once Othello is in Cyprus, Iago decides to work on his central plan. He wants to make Othello believe that his wife is in an adulterous relationship with the new lieutenant, Michael Cassio. Iago keeps on playing with Othello's mind through the process of having Othello listen to Cassio speak generously about his mistress, Bianca, even as Othello thinks that the mistress must be Desdemona. Othello blindly sees coincidences as evidences. It is true that the fire of jealousy in Othello's heart and his unjust trust in Iago lead him towards insanity and ultimate tragedy where he is found murdering Desdemona and committing suicide.
The title of the final chapter of David Armitage’s Civil Wars: A History in Ideas (2017), ‘Civil Wars of Words’, encapsulates both a fundamental argument of the book and a key aspect of its interpretative methodology. In this review essay, I consider the importance of linguistic and literary evidence to Armitage’s method of intellectual history in his global study of civil wars, and suggest how this method can offer a foundation for a new cultural and literary history of civil war. I consider and connect literary representations of civil war from classical Rome, Shakespearean England, the British Civil Wars, the American Civil War and the Northern Ireland Troubles.
In 1641, Thomas Beedome’s first and only book, Poems Divine, and Humane , was published posthumously. Considering this volume of poetry in the context of a proliferation of poetry publishing in mid-seventeenth century England and accepting the idea that early modern paratexts provided an ideal site for the renegotiation and manifestation of authorship, I argue that throughout the front matter of Beedome’s book, the largest part of which is taken up by commendatory poetry, a concept of the author, not only as singular creator, but also as proprietor of his work, is created. This essay shows how the writers of the commendatory verses try to single out Beedome by almost obsessively labelling him as a worthy author, comparing him favourably with classical and contemporary poets, and affirming the proprietary relationship between Beedome and his poems.
Focussing on Ophelia’s suicide in Hamlet, as it is represented in the different texts of the play, this essay argues that the play mediates the diverse responses to self-murder in the early modern period. The social status of the suicide could determine the coroner’s verdict. Literary scholars have paid too little attention to the way the texts of the play are symptomatic of theological, popular and legal attitudes to early modern suicide. The culture of suicide resonates with the text in ways more complicated than some historians have assumed.
In Western thought, suicide has evolved from sin to sin-and-crime, to crime, to mental illness, and to semilegal act. A legal act is one we are free to think and speak about and plan and perform, without penalty by agents of the state. While dying voluntarily is ostensibly legal, suicide attempts and even suicidal thoughts are routinely punished by incarceration in a psychiatric institution. Although many people believe the prevention of suicide is one of the duties the modern state owes its citizens, Szasz argues that suicide is a basic human right and that the lengths to which the medical industry goes to prevent it represent a deprivation of that right. Drawing on his general theory of the myth of mental illness, Szasz makes a compelling case that the voluntary termination of one's own life is the result of a decision, not a disease. He presents an in-depth examination and critique of contemporary anti-suicide policies, which are based on the notion that voluntary death is a mental health problem, and systematically lays out the dehumanizing consequences of psychiatrizing suicide prevention. If suicide be deemed a problem, it is not a medical problem. Managing it as if it were a disease, or the result of a disease, will succeed only in debasing medicine and corrupting the law. Pretending to be the pride of medicine, psychiatry is its shame.
This book considers melancholy as an "assemblage," as a network of dynamic, interpretive relationships between persons, bodies, texts, spaces, structures, and things. In doing so, it parts ways with past interpretations of melancholy. Tilting the English Renaissance against the present moment, Daniel argues that the basic disciplinary tension between medicine and philosophy persists within contemporary debates about emotional embodiment.To make this case, the book binds together the paintings of Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, the drama of Shakespeare, the prose of Burton, and the poetry of Milton. Crossing borders and periods, Daniel combines recent theories which have--until now--been regarded as incongruous by their respective advocates.Asking fundamental questions about how the experience of emotion produces community, the book will be of interest to scholars of early modern literature, psychoanalysis, the affective turn, and continental philosophy.
This book contributes to our understanding of Ovid, Milton, and more generally the reception of classical traditions. It shows that Milton drew on all of Ovid's works as well as the long tradition of interpretation and reception that began with Ovid himself. It argues that for Renaissance writers Ovid's revision of past authors, especially Virgil, gave them a model for their own transformation of classical works. For Renaissance artists, Ovidian stories and figures provided the raw material out of which they created and reflected on their own art. Throughout his career Milton thinks through and with Ovid, whose stories and figures are central to his exploration of the limits and possibilities of creativity, change, and freedom. A study in practical criticism that examines a specific relation between two very individual and different authors, this book also explores the forms and meaning of creative imitation. Revision was not only central to the two writers' poetic practices but helped shape their visions of the world. Many critics have been concerned with trying to establish how Milton read Ovid. The larger question in this book, however, is why does figuring out how Milton reads Ovid matter? How do our readings of this relation change our understanding of both Milton and Ovid; what also does it tell us about how traditions are changed and remade through time?
In this paper, I consider what Baz Luhrmann’s Juliet (Claire Danes), her Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio), and the story of their “death-marked love” teach viewers about selfhood, love, hate, and death. It is frequently noted that Juliet demonstrates more maturity, but Luhrmann’s 1996 film both confirms and complicates this reading by linking Shakespeare’s play to Ovid’s tale of “Narcissus and Echo.” Luhrmann translates the play’s classical references into visual images; he uses mirrors and reflections, through glass and water, to suggest that Romeo and Juliet’s love for one another is very similar to narcissistic love of the self. It is Juliet who attempts to shift the relationship from love of the self to love of an “other,” but doing so necessitates their death. My reading imagines a version of love that transcends the mirroring of a simply-thought and simply-structured narcissism and considers the problem inherent in linking the self to an “other” in relationships. Luhrmann’s Juliet suggests that girls’ love holds great power, but that self-love is what defines this power.
Neo-Latin drama largely functioned as a supplement to university education in early modern England, proving an ideal medium to articulate humanistic principles. However, during the reign of James I, these plays began engaging with less strictly academic ideas. This article examines how George Ruggle's Ignoramus (1615) and Peter Hausted's Senile Odium (1631) promote the humanistic principle of imitatio and, so doing, comment on broader cultural issues. While in many ways typical academic dramas, these plays feature twin characters, linking them to imitatio. This article argues that in celebrating imitatio, these plays also elevate and promote the twin condition, shunning stereotypes.
This essay explores perhaps the most unusual death scene in all of Shakespeare’s plays: that of Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra, in which Enobarbus wills himself to die in the absence of any obvious physical cause. Readers have traditionally viewed this death scene as “Roman” in character, but I argue that Enobarbus’s demise aligns symbolically with Cleopatra’s as an instance of an easy death, and moreover a death that (following Stanley Cavell’s broad argument about Shakespearean tragedy) enables the character to avoid the full weight of the catastrophe that conventionally occurs at the end of a tragic drama. Shakespeare’s treatment of Enobarbus and Cleopatra offers interesting resonances with other late plays that have tragic elements but fit uneasily into any single genre.
This article draws together the theories of practice articulated by Michel de Certeau and recent work on the physiology of reading to argue that women's reading, ca. 1560–1640, was understood as a bodily activity shaped by, and also working upon, its physical situation. Drawing upon a range of sources, including funeral sermons, diaries, and Helkiah Crooke's influential Mikrocosmographia, Helen Smith demonstrates the connections in early modern thought between reading and the physiology of seeing, hearing, remembering, and digesting, arguing that early modern descriptions of reading situate it as an embodied experience within a broader set of material practices and encounters.
One of the most frequently read and performed of all stage works, Shakespeare's Hamlet is unsurpassed in its complexity and richness. Now the first fully annotated version of Hamlet makes the play completely accessible to readers in the twenty-first century. It has been carefully assembled with students, teachers, and the general reader in mind. Eminent linguist and translator Burton Raffel offers generous help with vocabulary and usage of Elizabethan English, pronunciation, prosody, and alternative reading of phrases and lines. His on-page annotations provide readers with all the tools they need to comprehend the play and begin to explore its many possible interpretations. This version of Hamlet is unparalleled for its thoroughness and adherence to sound linguistic principles. In his introduction, Raffel offers important background on the origins and previous versions of the Hamlet story, along with an analysis of the characters Hamlet and Ophelia. And in a concluding essay, Harold Bloom meditates on the originality of Shakespeare's achievement. The book also includes a careful selection of items for "Further Reading."
Shakespeare's Romans are intensely concerned with being 'constant'. But, as this book shows, that virtue is far more ambiguous than is often recognized. The author begins by showing how the Stoic principle of being 'always the same' was shaped by two Roman writers into very different ideals: Cicero's Roman actor, playing an appropriate role with consistent decorum, and Seneca's Stoic hero, unmoved as a rock despite having been battered by adversity. Miles then traces the controversial history of these ideals through the Renaissance, focusing on the complex relationship between constancy and knowledge. Montaigne's sympathetic but devastating critique of Stoicism is examined in detail. Building on this genealogy of constancy, the final chapters read Shakespeare's Roman plays as his reworking of a triptych of figures found in Plutarch: the constant Brutus, the inconstant Antony, and the obstinate Coriolanus. The tragedies of these characters, the author demonstrates, act out the attractions, flaws, and self-contradictions of constancy, and the tragi-comic failure of the Roman hope that 'were man/But constant, he were perfect'.