A sampling of current PhD projects in the field of early modern studies in the Department of English, University of Exeter.
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”.
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.
Mohamed Elaskary, “The Image of the Moor in the Works of Four Elizabethan Dramatists: George Peele, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood and William Shakespeare.” The plays discussed by Mohamed Elaskary in his PhD thesis are judged against the contradictory policies adopted by Elizabeth I and James I concerning the relationship between England and the Muslim world. The contribution this study aims to offer to the western reader is that it will involve scrutinizing Arabic texts and contexts whenever available. Thus, Arabic sources concerning the historical accounts of the battle al-Kasr el-Kebir (the battle of Alcazar); the expulsion of Moors from Spain or Moorish and Turkish piracy will be invoked. In the same vein, the reception of these plays in the Arab world will be considered at the end of each chapter.
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 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.
Roxanne Grimmett, “Staging Silence: The Adulteress in Jacobean Drama and Morality Literature.” Dr. Grimmett’s recently completed PhD thesis examines the representation of adultery on the Jacobean stage and in early modern didactic literature – two genres that are more commonly viewed in opposition, since conduct book writers so frequently condemn the immorality of play-going. Yet, as her study demonstrates, the “sex tragedies” of Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster and Middleton actually reveal the perversely theatrical tone of the early modern conduct literature for women. By encouraging women to perform the external signifiers of virtue, rather than actually to be virtuous, these didactic works, the plays suggest, unwittingly encourage female performance and provide the perfect theatrical handbook for any woman – or even man – wishing to fake the appearance of feminine sexual purity.
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.
