Catholic semiotics in Shakespearean drama
<p>The preoccupation with the biographical question “Was Shakespeare a Catholic?” has obscured the literary significance of the residual Catholicism in his plays. Problematically representing England’s heritage and also its contemporary enemy, Catholicism has an awkward but unavoidable resona...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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2006
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| _version_ | 1811140031346114560 |
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| author | Woods, GM |
| author2 | Maguire, L |
| author_facet | Maguire, L Woods, GM |
| author_sort | Woods, GM |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | <p>The preoccupation with the biographical question “Was Shakespeare a Catholic?” has obscured the literary significance of the residual Catholicism in his plays. Problematically representing England’s heritage and also its contemporary enemy, Catholicism has an awkward but unavoidable resonance when it appears in early modern drama. On the one hand polemic and (some) legislation produced a firm sectarian binary whereby superstitious, hypocritical and treacherous papists differentially defined a Protestant ideal. But on the other, English religious identity was a hybrid of traditional beliefs, non-theological nostalgia and political-religious disapprobation of Romish corruption. Attending to both flux and dichotomy, I demonstrate that looking at the way Catholic signs signify enriches our understanding of the texts of which they are a structural and structuring part. I consider a diversity of plays to show that just as Catholic resonance alters according to context, generic difference is also partly determined by ideological content. Catholicism was associated with ideological fraud and thus its literary presence renders the early modern concern about the moral and philosophical validity of fiction both more evident and more pressing. I explore what Shakespeare’s use of residual Catholicism tells us about his attitude to the value of creativity. </p>
<p>The wide application of an understanding of Catholic semiotics is demonstrated through a consideration of a variety of dramaturgical features. The linguistic focus of Chapters 1 and 2 encompasses the dramatic implications of Catholic metaphors and oxymoron in Romeo and Juliet and The Comedy of Errors, and the links between verbal and theological slippage created by the use of topical onomastics in Love’s Labour’s Lost. The next two chapters explore dramatic epistemology by looking at the productive difficulties of characterising a famous Catholic in the multi-authored Sir Thomas More, and the fabrication of layered identity through the use of Catholic costume in Measure for Measure and All’s Well that Ends Well. Chapter 5 concentrates on King Lear, and in particular on Shakespeare’s reading of a polemical tract that denigrates Catholic ritual as a dangerously fraudulent fiction. Concluding with The Winter’s Tale, I explore a positive reading of superstition that grants to fiction an emotional and ethical transcendence. </p>
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| first_indexed | 2024-09-25T04:15:31Z |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oxford-uuid:6f974dbc-f16d-406b-92eb-4e920ffea257 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-25T04:15:31Z |
| publishDate | 2006 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:6f974dbc-f16d-406b-92eb-4e920ffea2572024-07-16T16:51:49ZCatholic semiotics in Shakespearean dramaThesishttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_db06uuid:6f974dbc-f16d-406b-92eb-4e920ffea257ShakespeareEnglishHyrax Deposit2006Woods, GMMaguire, L<p>The preoccupation with the biographical question “Was Shakespeare a Catholic?” has obscured the literary significance of the residual Catholicism in his plays. Problematically representing England’s heritage and also its contemporary enemy, Catholicism has an awkward but unavoidable resonance when it appears in early modern drama. On the one hand polemic and (some) legislation produced a firm sectarian binary whereby superstitious, hypocritical and treacherous papists differentially defined a Protestant ideal. But on the other, English religious identity was a hybrid of traditional beliefs, non-theological nostalgia and political-religious disapprobation of Romish corruption. Attending to both flux and dichotomy, I demonstrate that looking at the way Catholic signs signify enriches our understanding of the texts of which they are a structural and structuring part. I consider a diversity of plays to show that just as Catholic resonance alters according to context, generic difference is also partly determined by ideological content. Catholicism was associated with ideological fraud and thus its literary presence renders the early modern concern about the moral and philosophical validity of fiction both more evident and more pressing. I explore what Shakespeare’s use of residual Catholicism tells us about his attitude to the value of creativity. </p> <p>The wide application of an understanding of Catholic semiotics is demonstrated through a consideration of a variety of dramaturgical features. The linguistic focus of Chapters 1 and 2 encompasses the dramatic implications of Catholic metaphors and oxymoron in Romeo and Juliet and The Comedy of Errors, and the links between verbal and theological slippage created by the use of topical onomastics in Love’s Labour’s Lost. The next two chapters explore dramatic epistemology by looking at the productive difficulties of characterising a famous Catholic in the multi-authored Sir Thomas More, and the fabrication of layered identity through the use of Catholic costume in Measure for Measure and All’s Well that Ends Well. Chapter 5 concentrates on King Lear, and in particular on Shakespeare’s reading of a polemical tract that denigrates Catholic ritual as a dangerously fraudulent fiction. Concluding with The Winter’s Tale, I explore a positive reading of superstition that grants to fiction an emotional and ethical transcendence. </p> |
| spellingShingle | Shakespeare Woods, GM Catholic semiotics in Shakespearean drama |
| title | Catholic semiotics in Shakespearean drama |
| title_full | Catholic semiotics in Shakespearean drama |
| title_fullStr | Catholic semiotics in Shakespearean drama |
| title_full_unstemmed | Catholic semiotics in Shakespearean drama |
| title_short | Catholic semiotics in Shakespearean drama |
| title_sort | catholic semiotics in shakespearean drama |
| topic | Shakespeare |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT woodsgm catholicsemioticsinshakespeareandrama |