Studies in 16th-Century Literature (431-0-20)
Topic
Political Thought in Shakespearean Contexts
Instructors
Laurie J Shannon
847 4913643
University Hall Room 214
Meeting Info
University Hall 418: Wed 2:00PM - 4:50PM
Overview of class
A Tudor idiom frames the now commonplace phrase, "the body politic." What mythographies, theologies, theories, and ideologies built this conception of socio-political organization? While social contract theory would soon reach new predominance (ie with Thomas Hobbes in the 17thC and rising 18thC claims about the foundational role of consent to government), what models preceded it? What claims and values justified the apparent organicism of a faith or reliance on the human body as an allegory for political authority? How do these approaches manage qualities like gender, age, or illness that might trouble the allegory?
This seminar will consider some key texts in early English political thought, beginning with the Tudor court case from which the phrase "the body politic" is mainly cited, and proceeding then to materials from the unsettling events of the English Reformation that address the question of obedience to the secular power (ie Thomas More's Utopia, William Tyndale's Obedience of a Christian Man, Thomas Cranmer's homilies from the first decade of the English church) and to anatomical and medical materials (like Thomas Elyot's Castel of Helthe and Helkiah Crooke's Microcosmographia). From this groundwork, we will move on consider early modern English debates about royal authority, including the ideological disarray triggered by the historical facts of a female monarch and of rebellion as treason (ie John Knox's First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, selected speeches given by Elizabeth I, James I's The Law of Free Monarchy, and John Milton's Tenure of Kings and Magistrates). To explore these dynamics in the context of theater (then the largest assemblages of people into "bodies"), the seminar will delve into several Shakespeare plays (from among Henry IV 1&2, Richard II, Richard III, A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear, and most particularly Measure for Measure) to assess the proposition that Shakespeare — among his other forms of attention — was also a political theorist.