Bodies and becomings: human and animal encounters in early modern English literature
Files
Date
2016
Authors
Lambert, Shannon Raha
Editors
Advisors
Kerr, Heather Beviss
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Type:
Theses
Citation
Statement of Responsibility
Conference Name
Abstract
In this thesis I undertake a poststructuralist study of human and animal relations in early modern English literature. I argue that the “type” of human we understand ourselves to be is directly related to the “type” of animal we encounter. Specifically, “bounded” and “essentialist” conceptions of the human depend on notions of animals as “territorialised,” “passive” “objects.” Instead of reinforcing the idea of “human being,” I attend to the “affective” materiality and mobility of human and animal bodies to suggest kinds of “human becomings.” I pursue this aim by using the “affective” philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. I use three different “affective” approaches to bodies—“cartographic,” “meaty,” and “machinic”—to explore representations of human and animal bodies within the early modern contexts of bear-baiting, hunting, and music-making. In Chapter 1, I consider representations of bear-baiting by John Stow and Edmond Howes, William Shakespeare, Robert Laneham, and Thomas Nashe. In these representations bears move from “objects” of the spectators’ gaze, to “actants,” which like the Heideggerian “thing,” exert their efficacy and autonomy through non-cooperation. As “actants,” the animals in these examples emit affects which, potentially, draw spectators into an experience of “becoming-dog.” In Chapter 2, representations of the stag hunt by George Gascoigne, William Shakespeare, and Margaret Cavendish suggest somatic continuity between humans and animals. I argue that the shared carnality between humans and stags in these texts creates an affective “zone of proximity,” which Deleuze labels “meat.” “Meat” allows us to read moments of “deterritorialisation” in which “affects,” produced both voluntarily and involuntarily, disrupt categorical distinctions between humans and stags. The categories of “human” and “animal” emerge, in this chapter, as contingent rather than essential. In Chapter 3, I challenge ideas of animal, and indeed material, passivity through a “vital materialist” reading of acts of music-making in poems by Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare. In this chapter, “affects” are machinic—that is, connective—flows or vibrations of matter, which Deleuze and Guattari label “non-organic” or “non-localised” desire. Desire creates connections between not only humans and animals, but also organic and inorganic matter, suggesting an ontology of “human becomings.”
School/Discipline
School of Humanities
Dissertation Note
Thesis (M.Phil.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2016.
Provenance
This electronic version is made publicly available by the University of Adelaide in accordance with its open access policy for student theses. Copyright in this thesis remains with the author. This thesis may incorporate third party material which has been used by the author pursuant to Fair Dealing exceptions. If you are the owner of any included third party copyright material you wish to be removed from this electronic version, please complete the take down form located at: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/legals