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New Historicism – the Relationship Between Literature and History
Rather like Michel Foucault, the New Historicist believes that words are power and that it is through words that we are ‘communicated’ into being. Those who would ‘normalise’ and ‘socialise’ us to their purposes can do this well with facts and reported events that support their goals.
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Use and Abuse of Power in the Writings of Virginia Woolf
Whilst in full flow in answering the latter point, she quotes from Gray’s Ode : “what is grandeur, what is power? – what the bright reward we gain?’ Gain indeed; power is what people want and in her writings Woolf not only demonstrates this but she also deals with some of the ways and reasons…
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Today is a Phlegmatic/Sanguine Day
It should come as little surprise that humoural theory found its way into astrology most notably with Ptolemy – and so the astrological sign Cancer is associated with Water (cold/wet) and Libra with Air (Hot/Wet).
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The Impact of World War I on Modernist Writers
It seems that this knowledge has prevented Clarissa from also committing suicide although why she would want to do so – so privileged she was such – is not completely clear. If, as she believed, her life was a failure then more had to be at root of such failure than the fact that she…
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The Cultural Construction of ‘Woman’ throughout history in Western Art & Literature
For example, in her essay Poses and Passions, Zirka Filipczak reminds us that the poses adopted by men and women in the artwork of the English Renaissance are strategically quite different – whilst men are represented as active (holding a sword, perhaps) and intelligent (hands on a stack of books, for example), women either sit…
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Disguise as a Device in Renaissance Drama
If as postmodern philosophers like Foucault have suggested, the ‘self’ is narrated into existence by the stories that we and others tell us about us, then this ability to be someone else allows the disguised character to disconnect with his/her story and play an entirely different one to great effect.
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Tradition and Form in Renaissance Tragedy
The form of English tragedy has most certain evolved over time – with Chaucer it was a ‘ditty’ about prosperity ending in wretchedness whist in later periods it had morphed into sad stories about a man’s fall as told by his ghost. By the 15th and early 16th century, we see the so-called ‘everyman (morality)…
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The Concept of Canon & The Secret Book of John
If we accept that (1) the concept of canon has existed for at least two thousand years and likely to exist for a few more and (2) in our increasingly globally mobile society, canon formation will not become easier then we need to look for a new solution and I propose that to be a…
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The Significance of Humoural Theory in Early Modern Drama
In his essay Hamlet and His Problems, TS Eliot (81-87) concludes that such refusal leaves Hamlet ‘dominated by an emotion’ which ‘is inexpressible’ – he can neither ‘understand’ nor ‘objectify’ it – and if a key character such as Hamlet remains inexpressible on stage, then as Eliot suggests the play is an ‘artistic failure’.
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The Role & Representation of the City in Modernist Literature
The implication is that if human character has changed (and according to Woolf at the end of the day all literature is about character) then literature must change as well. What better backdrop than the city to illustrate these changes!
ARCHETYPAL ASSETS
Innovation in Cultural Cosmology / by Debra DeLeo Moolenaar