Self-Speaking in Medieval and Early Modern English Drama: Subjectivity, Discourse and the Stage (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780333628997)

This book documents the changing representation of subjectivity in Medieval and Early Modern English drama by intertextually exploring discourses of 'self-speaking', including soliloquy. Pre-modern ideas about language are combined with recent models of subject formation, especially Lacan's, to theorize and analyze the stage 'self' as a variable linguistic construct. Both the approach itself and the conclusions it generates significantly diverge from the standard New Historicist/Cultural Materialist narrative of subjectivity. Plays range from the Corpus Christi pageants to the Beaumont and Fletcher canon, with Shakespeare a recurrent focus and Hamlet, inevitably, the pivotal text.

Author: R. Hillman
ISBN-10: 0333628993
ISBN-13: 9780333628997
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Language: English
Published: 05/30/1997
Pages: 309
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.22lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.88d