"Remorse without the fear of hell": Skepticism and agency in romantic drama.
Item
-
Title
-
"Remorse without the fear of hell": Skepticism and agency in romantic drama.
-
Identifier
-
AAI9807974
-
identifier
-
9807974
-
Creator
-
Mozes, Daniel.
-
Contributor
-
Adviser: Joseph Anthony Wittreich
-
Date
-
1997
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Literature, English
-
Abstract
-
This study reinterprets British Romanticism as such. It places drama, formerly at the margins, in the center of the Romantic movement. It dispenses with the myth that Romantic literature constitutes a retreat into the mind, a celebration of the self that amounts to an admission of despair for any political or social apocalypse. Romantic playwrights call for a greater and a more dialogic understanding of where modern skepticism puts us--"dialogue" referring not just to the spoken interplay between characters representing differing philosophical complexes but also to the dialogue the text stages with itself through self-critical dramatic plots, ironies, as well as characters in conflict. This study establishes an unbroken line of dramatic dialogue and debate among these writers. The dramas examined here--Wordsworth's The Borderers, Coleridge's Osorio, Shelley's The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound, Byron's Manfred and Marino Faliero, and Baillie's De Monfort--form a dialogue centered around two skeptical moves and the possibilities for responding to them. Romantic drama assumes the Enlightenment's thoroughgoing skepticism of all custom, received thought, and complacency. The seven dramas form a discrete body because, unlike any other coherent body of plays, these are all very specifically about the possibility of freedom in a post-revolutionary world, a world in which human nature itself seems in danger of degenerating and human communication failing. Each drama attempts to confront an idea of modernity in which such skepticism is both the starting point for understanding the world and the source of a threat that we will never be able to reform human nature for the better. Using Stanley Cavell's formulations about skepticism of other souls, this study shows how miscommunication paradoxically lies at the heart of these dialogic texts. Employing Bernard Williams's descriptions of how shame can divide the self, this study explores the way in which Byron's characters especially become self-riven.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
