Word as Bond in English Literature from the Middle Ages to the RestorationFor centuries, the transmission of power in feudal European society depended on a code of fidelity, of political allegiance, and truth to one's word. The word as bond extended to include not only the pledge of allegiance between subject and king, but the troth-plight between lovers, the vow of friendship, and the judicial oath. Society was ultimately based upon a gentleman's or gentlewoman's word that was itself underwritten by the Word of God. J. Douglas Canfield argues that English literature of the feudal epoch placed this master trope of word as bond at the center of conflict. The trope does not passively reflect social reality; rather, it helps to define, to constitute the society and its values. Both society and literature were preoccupied by the contest between fidelity on the one hand and its antithesis, betrayal (with the political and sexual anarchy that it threatened) on the other. In literature, the conflict was usually resolved through supernatural aid, the intervention of the Logos, which guaranteed the validity of the word. Canfield analyzes over 25 representative works, focusing on Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Dryden, in the five dominant modes of aristocratic literature-romance, comedy, lyric, tragedy, and satire. In each chapter, he offers three examples, one from the Middle Ages, one from the Renaissance, and one from the Restoration. Canfield's study proceeds synchronically, attempting to show that the trope is always under stress. The language of heroic romance coexists with the language of subversive comedy and absurdist satire. In an Afterword, he suggests why the trope disappears--not from the discourse, where it remains to this day, but from the center of conflict in English literature after 1688. |
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... play raises , then , is how efficacious is the chivalric code of trust for someone in this life . Mamillius is dead ... play with Apollo's judg- ment . Instead , he wrote the second half of the play in order to work out the oracle's own ...
... play suggests that just as the microcosm of play or play - within - a - play has no justice , so also the macrocosm of the real world has no justice . Indeed , even the King is a son of Adam and therefore frail . And perhaps there is ...
... play within the play , the Player Queen continues : The instances that second marriage move Are base respects of thrift , but none of love . A second time I kill my husband dead When second husband kisses me in bed . ( 3.2.174-77 ) The ...
Contents
HEROIC ROMANCE | 3 |
TRAGICOMIC ROMANCE | 45 |
SOCIAL COMEDY | 83 |
Copyright | |
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