Description
- Abstract:
- This dissertation examines the errant role that pleasure plays in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English writers' attempts to define the epistemological, ethical, and civic value of poetry. My focus is on the mode of writing known as romance, which came under attack in the Renaissance for allegedly producing an excess of pleasure over utility. I argue that the threat of poetry's futility, which was pushed to the limits in the case of romance, reveals fundamental contradictions within the project of Renaissance humanism and constitutes a blind spot for contemporary criticism. Countering a critical tradition that approaches Renaissance texts as useful instruments for working through ethical issues, I analyze how works by William Shakespeare, Roger Ascham, Thomas Nashe, Edmund Spenser, and John Milton confront and fail to resolve a tension between the pleasurable means and useful ends of poetic creation. My primary premise is that modern humanism recapitulates rather than interrogates the defensive or apologetic logic of Reformation-era treatises on poetry. Arguing about the utility of literature may assuage our moral anxieties as critics, especially in the face of the growing corporatization of the academy. Nevertheless, our adherence to an instrumental view of aesthetics calls out for critique not only because it reproduces a one-sided view of Renaissance poetic theory, but also because it functions according to a defensive logic that diminishes rather than enhances what is most "useful" or "valuable" about poetry: its distinctive ability to ironize the very notions of "use" and "value." My project thus intersects with recent attempts made by queer theorists to show how perverse pleasures exceed the ends toward which they must be directed. In this way, it calls into question what I see as contemporary criticism's pervasive hedonophobia and points to the need for re-thinking how we measure the value of literature, the arts, and the humanities. Rather than automatically defend or justify literature against the charges of idleness, errancy, and escapism, my project critiques the rhetorical and institutional forces that activate such defensive reflexes.
- Notes:
- Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2011)
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Citation
McEleney, Corey William,
"The Pleasure in Error: Early Modern Romance and Poetic Futility"
(2011).
English Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z06Q1VG5
