A sampling of current PhD projects in the field of early modern studies in the Department of English, University of Exeter.
Jennifer Barnes, “Representations of masculinity and the male body in the filmed Shakespeare adaptations of Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Franco Zeffirelli and Kenneth Branagh.” My research project will examine representations of masculinity and the masculine body in filmed adaptations of Shakespearean tragedies and histories, focusing on the cinematic works of Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Franco Zeffirelli and Kenneth Branagh. I am interested in how the film texts under discussion appropriate ‘Shakespeare’ as a means by which to assert cultural ideals of masculinity and, particularly, in the ways in which the auteur himself is represented via the masculine body on screen.
Jeremy Bloomfield, “The Theatrical Afterlife of the Duchess of Malfi.” Jem Bloomfield is researching a PhD on the theatrical afterlife of Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. He is particularly interested in the ways in which performance conditions and printings interact to produce a play’s “meaning” at different cultural moments. His current research suggests that the first printing of The Duchess was largely influenced by the politics of the “Spanish Match”.
Dan Cattell, “The Polemical Succession: James I and the Writing of Controversy.” Dan Cattell’s research interests include the representation of confessional identities and the materiality of print culture. His doctoral thesis, funded by the AHRC, examines Catholic-Protestant controversial writings within a specific moment of anticipated and then actualised dynastic change. Drawing on theorists of technological innovation and the transformation of the word such as Walter Ong, S.J. and incorporating current insights into early modern bibliography, he assesses the impact these writings may have had on the broader literary culture of the period.
Elizabeth Darnill, “Vital Visionary Forms: A comparison of the poetry of Edmund Spenser and William Blake and their relation to allegory.” I am arguing that both poets are allegorical and that both develop a dynamic form of poetry that challenges readers to engage with the text on many levels – linguistically, imaginatively and visually.
Philip Denning, “‘…imputed to [them] for righteousness’: The influence of the Classics on the theology of Milton.” I am exploring Milton’s attitudes towards the ancients. Not content to merely continue the Renaissance tradition of attempting to Christianise classical myth and philosophy, Milton, I believe, took it a stage further, by recognising within what the ancients had left behind, valid paths to salvation that could take full advantage of the eternal grace provided by Calvary.
Lee Durbin. Concurrent with recent scholarship building on the work of Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan – early pioneers in the study of the cultural effects of technological change – and with a particular focus on the private library collection, curiosity cabinet (and its later incarnation, the Kunstkammer), and the application of Ramist techniques, my study aims to reassess the efforts of Renaissance poets, scholars and collectors as they sought to transpose the mnemonic devices of pre-Gutenberg oral society to the new (information) technology of typographic print. In a wider literary context, my research draws upon works such as Thomas Heywood’s Gunaikeion and Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion as examples of the early modern database and hypertext, demonstrating that not only were current trends in the digital world anticipated in the literary heritage of early modern England, but that much can be garnered too from seventeenth century storage-and-retrieval systems as we embark upon the second information revolution. Further details on my research can be found in my blog, Marginalia .
Jo Esra, “Shaping ‘West Barbary.” My thesis focuses on a localised element to the cross-cultural practice of 16th and 17th century Barbary captivity, which specifically involves the West Country. I am particularly interested in discerning how national, regional, ethnic and religious ontologies, landscapes and subjectivities are imagined and produced through these localised practices and their representations. In order to contextualise understandings of relevant identities and concepts, such as ‘Cornish’, ‘Englishness’, ‘Turk’, ‘barbarism’ and ‘heresy’, my research is framed within early modern revisions of classical humoral and climate theory. This engages in wider discussions concerning identity and the environment taking place at Exeter Cornwall Campus.
Samantha Frenee, “The Cultural and Ideological Significance of Representations of Boudica during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I.” My research follows in the steps of Boudica from her rediscovery in the Classical texts by the humanist scholars of the sixteenth century to her didactic and nationalist representations by both English and Scottish historians and her appropriation by poets and playwrights under Elizabeth I and James I. Focussing on both literary and non-literary texts this study seeks to show how the frequent manipulation and circulation of Boudica’s story contributed to the polemics of English and British national identities, imperial aspirations and gender politics during the early modern period and shows how such heated debate led to the emergence of a polyvalent national myth and icon, that of Boadicea, Celtic warrior of the British Empire, mother to the nation and ardent feminist, defending the freedom of land, nation and women.
Briony Frost, “Becoming a King’s Man: Did Shakespeare Meddle in the Affairs of State?” Turning with the tide of criticism that would see Shakespeare restored to his own age to be best understood, my research, funded by the AHRC, tackles three of Shakespeare’s most contentious but arguably greatest tragedies, Macbeth, King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra, in the context of the turbulent early years of James I’s reign. Addressing issues of succession, representation, the arcane imperii and the legacy of Queen Elizabeth, I shall explore whether the king’s patronage allowed Shakespeare to “o’erleap” the step of censorship to meddle in the affairs of state.
Taihei Hanada, “Milton and the Idea of Labour.” Taihei Hanada works on early modern economy and science, philosophy of history and Milton. His PhD thesis (funded by ORSAS) examines the poet’s radical understanding of the human condition against the backdrop of the Renaissance formation of identity dissociated from the labouring body. His wider interests lie in the constructive transition from new historicism to textual ethics (e.g. ecopoetics, memory and rereading) and exploring how the new philosophy of labour posited by thinkers such as Michel Henry, Arendt, Berdyaev, Simone Weil and Agamben could contribute to this transition.
Charlie Nicholls, “Anatomy of the Soul in Milton’s Epic Poetry.” In his later works Milton theorised and represented the soul as a material entity. This thesis explores the poet’s use of natural philosophy and the different medical models of the soul that he used with particular reference to a lesser known heretical vitalist of the period, Francis Glisson, chymical Galenist and contemporary Regius Professor of Physic and Cambridge University. The interrelations of theology and physic are considered in myths and theories of the soul’s origin, falleness and redemption.
Philip Robinson, “The Politics of Civic Space and the Early Modern Lord Mayor’s Show (1605-1639).” My thesis focuses on the texts of the Lord Mayor’s Show in early modern London, authored in the period (mainly) by Anthony Munday, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton and Thomas Heywood. In my reading of these comparatively neglected texts, I draw out a number of issues: the mayoral shows’ construction of English and British history; their response to the economic and physical growth of the City; their self-construction as a literary genre; their commentary on other civic texts of the period; and their reading of various contemporary political crises. Overall, I draw on recent spatial theory from a variety of disciplines in an analysis of these texts’ engagement with the politics of space – physical and metaphorical – in early modern London.
Victoria Sparey, “The Mother’s Blood in Renaissance Generative Theory and Shakespeare.” To date, literary and historical criticism has failed to discern the potency of the mother’s blood in the formation of early modern offspring. Blood, one of the four bodily humours, when located in the female body has become particularly entrenched in ideas that equate women’s blood with menstruation and monstrosity. This has obscured tensions within Renaissance generative theory where infants were imagined to be nourished by the mother’s menstrual blood for 9 months in the womb, and at the breast for an additional year or more in the form of milk. As a humoral substance that influenced physical and emotional condition, my research argues that the mother’s blood presents a troubling complication to fantasies of male parthenogenesis. Using the tensions within Renaissance generative theory, I offer new readings of Shakespearean texts and expand upon criticism that has highlighted masculine anxieties towards maternity, but that has failed to address the issue of the mother’s blood.
Zhiyan Zhang, “Death and Memory in Shakespearean Tragedies.” My PhD thesis (funded by ORSAS and CSC) will explore themes of death and memory in King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, and especially Hamlet. Death, like plague, is pervasive and inevitable in Shakespearean tragedies. Memory, like a shadow or a ghost, also sets foot in most plays and hovers in protagonists’ minds. What is Shakespeare’s attitude towards death? Does Hamlet harbor the death wish or is he worried about what is unknowable after death? Does memory lead Hamlet to death or is memory what can give him consolation after death? Where possible, I hope to explore death and memory in Shakespearean tragedies anthropologically based on comparisons between English culture and Chinese culture.
