Shakespeare, Rabelais and the comical-historical.
Item
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Title
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Shakespeare, Rabelais and the comical-historical.
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Identifier
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AAI9630491
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identifier
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9630491
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Creator
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McLoughlin, Cathleen T.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Tom Hayes
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Date
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1996
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, English | Literature, Comparative | Literature, Classical | Literature, Romance
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Abstract
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King Henry IV Part One has more affinity with the comic tradition shared by Lucian, Erasmus, and Rabelais than with the category of Histories established by the First Folio editors. A discussion of Pieter Bruegel's painting 'The Combat of Carnival and Lent" and Hans Holbein's "The Ambassadors" provides a cultural framework for this study of Shakespeare's play. Bruegel's painting provides images that would have been available to Shakespeare's audience. Holbein's painting provides an analog to the play as a work which employs several levels of discourse simultaneously. Drama in the sixteenth century participated in the festive space displayed in Bruegel's painting. Shakespeare's play is composed with a similar symmetrical structure to that of both painting. The tavern scenes are balanced with the battlefield scenes on either side of the scene in which the topos of advice from father to son occurs. Scenes of drinking wine and eating flesh comment on scenes in which human flesh is consumed and blood flows like wine, representing communion and symbolic cannibalism. In the works of Erasmus and Rabelais, peace is privileged. In Shakespeare's play, militaristic values are promoted by the King. An intertextual reading of the play with the works of Rabelais, both involving a Prince and his unconventional companion, illuminates strands of Shakespeare's play not previously emphasized by critics.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
