The dramatic ecologies of As You Like It
<p>This thesis reads As You Like It’s various cultural perspectives as dramatic ecologies. At their intersections, where characters describe and respond to each other, they combine and clash, exposing linguistic and dramatic traces of these ecologies, which appear as multidimensional signs – w...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2019
|
| Subjects: |
| _version_ | 1826305759636357120 |
|---|---|
| author | Kroeger, W |
| author2 | Palfrey, S |
| author_facet | Palfrey, S Kroeger, W |
| author_sort | Kroeger, W |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | <p>This thesis reads As You Like It’s various cultural perspectives as dramatic ecologies. At their intersections, where characters describe and respond to each other, they combine and clash, exposing linguistic and dramatic traces of these ecologies, which appear as multidimensional signs – words, ideas, and mythical archetypes leading to multiple narrative subtexts. They create polysemic sites of possible interpretations, introducing potentially related but non-identical realities, simultaneously copresent in the forest playspace, constructing the conditions for emerging subjectivities. My analysis is both historical, attending to the unique cultural issues of each character’s world, and critical, considering the resonances of verbal repetitions and conceptual dissonances, foregrounding imbricated issues such as technology’s cultural impact, class conflict, women’s literacy, and Elizabethan race relations. My research is intertextual, addressing the play’s literary and historical precursors, including Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Lodge’s Rosalind, The Fairie Queene and Sidney’s Arcadia, as well as intratextual, considering the interaction of these discourses as they connect in Arden. </p> <p>Beginning with Jaques, I address the forest’s Ovidian, Pythagorean cosmology, before exploring Touchstone’s contrasting approach to time and technology, and the influences of Rabelais and commedia dell’arte in the clown’s ecology, with its emphasis on conditionality. Chapter three analyses Corin’s work ethic (both social and physical), his cultural relativism, his role as guide to the forest society, and his poetic language, with its links to the tradition of classical and Elizabethan literary pastoral. Chapter four traces race and writing in Phoebe’s ecology, emphasising her role as social scapegoat, and chapter five considers Orlando’s heroic encounter with regard to its potential relevance for the other characters’ intertwined psychic journeys. Chapter six addresses Rosalind’s alchemical shapeshifting and literary self-expression as she negotiates Elizabethan gender norms; inhabiting the contrasting interpellations of other ecologies, she exemplifies the exiles’ citational, emergent subjectivity, which parallels audience responses to interpretive possibilities.</p> |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T06:37:43Z |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oxford-uuid:f83ac62a-4a96-4ee2-99d0-f449d5247e72 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-07T06:37:43Z |
| publishDate | 2019 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:f83ac62a-4a96-4ee2-99d0-f449d5247e722022-03-27T12:48:41ZThe dramatic ecologies of As You Like ItThesishttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_bdccuuid:f83ac62a-4a96-4ee2-99d0-f449d5247e72Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616ecocriticismOvidgender studiesraceMikhail Bakhtincommedia dell'artecritical theories of subjectivitypastoralEnglishORA Deposit2019Kroeger, WPalfrey, S<p>This thesis reads As You Like It’s various cultural perspectives as dramatic ecologies. At their intersections, where characters describe and respond to each other, they combine and clash, exposing linguistic and dramatic traces of these ecologies, which appear as multidimensional signs – words, ideas, and mythical archetypes leading to multiple narrative subtexts. They create polysemic sites of possible interpretations, introducing potentially related but non-identical realities, simultaneously copresent in the forest playspace, constructing the conditions for emerging subjectivities. My analysis is both historical, attending to the unique cultural issues of each character’s world, and critical, considering the resonances of verbal repetitions and conceptual dissonances, foregrounding imbricated issues such as technology’s cultural impact, class conflict, women’s literacy, and Elizabethan race relations. My research is intertextual, addressing the play’s literary and historical precursors, including Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Lodge’s Rosalind, The Fairie Queene and Sidney’s Arcadia, as well as intratextual, considering the interaction of these discourses as they connect in Arden. </p> <p>Beginning with Jaques, I address the forest’s Ovidian, Pythagorean cosmology, before exploring Touchstone’s contrasting approach to time and technology, and the influences of Rabelais and commedia dell’arte in the clown’s ecology, with its emphasis on conditionality. Chapter three analyses Corin’s work ethic (both social and physical), his cultural relativism, his role as guide to the forest society, and his poetic language, with its links to the tradition of classical and Elizabethan literary pastoral. Chapter four traces race and writing in Phoebe’s ecology, emphasising her role as social scapegoat, and chapter five considers Orlando’s heroic encounter with regard to its potential relevance for the other characters’ intertwined psychic journeys. Chapter six addresses Rosalind’s alchemical shapeshifting and literary self-expression as she negotiates Elizabethan gender norms; inhabiting the contrasting interpellations of other ecologies, she exemplifies the exiles’ citational, emergent subjectivity, which parallels audience responses to interpretive possibilities.</p> |
| spellingShingle | Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 ecocriticism Ovid gender studies race Mikhail Bakhtin commedia dell'arte critical theories of subjectivity pastoral Kroeger, W The dramatic ecologies of As You Like It |
| title | The dramatic ecologies of As You Like It |
| title_full | The dramatic ecologies of As You Like It |
| title_fullStr | The dramatic ecologies of As You Like It |
| title_full_unstemmed | The dramatic ecologies of As You Like It |
| title_short | The dramatic ecologies of As You Like It |
| title_sort | dramatic ecologies of as you like it |
| topic | Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 ecocriticism Ovid gender studies race Mikhail Bakhtin commedia dell'arte critical theories of subjectivity pastoral |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT kroegerw thedramaticecologiesofasyoulikeit AT kroegerw dramaticecologiesofasyoulikeit |