Papers by Eric Dunnum
This article describes how I use Marlowe's "Hero and Leander" in the class room to ... more This article describes how I use Marlowe's "Hero and Leander" in the class room to talk about rape and sexual assault. It also argues that Marlowe is aware of what we know refer to as rape culture and uses this concept to add context to the violent sexual encounter in the poem. For Marlowe this means a critique of the Petrarchian tradition and an awareness of how this tradition creates a situation where men can't take no for an answer and women are unable to say yes.
transitional justice within revolutionary politics, chapter 6 moves to the Restoration and focuse... more transitional justice within revolutionary politics, chapter 6 moves to the Restoration and focuses on the Act of Oblivion in 1660. This moment provides one of the many ways Meyler showcases the theatricality of political pardons as she explains how this act refused “to stage justice” in order to create an act of forgetting where revolutionary deeds “should be obliterated even from the theater of memory” (201). Meyler explicates how this erasure preserves the well-being of the state and connects to interpretations of Hobbes’s “politics without a scene” (245), considered in the final chapter. Meyler’s ending chapter adds further insight into the intriguing interchange between presence and absence of the sovereign that is so wonderfully thought through in the book. Meyler’s astute reading of Hobbes nicely frames the overall argument: as similar to James I, Hobbes and Charles II use pardoning as a way to reinforce sovereignty, yet their efforts in practice shift power to Parliament and away from the king. This leaves interesting questions about the nature of authority and forgiveness—and especially the link between pardoning and sovereignty—that Meyler discusses within more recent contexts in the postlude. In Theaters of Pardoning, Meyler remarkably evinces the mutual influence between literary and legal spheres; and yet, this truly groundbreaking approach will add to fields ranging from history and philosophy to political science.
Ben Jonson Journal, 2015
This paper highlights Epicene's position as the first public play Jonson wrote after a ru... more This paper highlights Epicene's position as the first public play Jonson wrote after a run of successful court masques to argue that the play offers a uncharacteristically positive portrayal of theatricality and performance. However, this optimism is eventually undercut by the political fallout resulting from its satire of Lady Arbelle.
The paper describes my approach to teaching Hero and Leader. I place the poem within the Petrarch... more The paper describes my approach to teaching Hero and Leader. I place the poem within the Petrarchan Sonnet and Courtly Love Tradition, while arguing that these traditions contributed to a "Renaissance Rape Culture." I then suggest that Marlowe's poem critiques that culture by uncovering its origins. I end by encouraging students to find links between Marlowe's culture and our own in order to partially uncover the roots of contemporary rape culture.
This paper highlights Epicene's position as the first public play Jonson wrote after a run of suc... more This paper highlights Epicene's position as the first public play Jonson wrote after a run of successful court masques to argue that the play offers a uncharacteristically positive portrayal of theatricality and performance. However, this optimism is eventually undercut by the political fallout resulting from its satire of Lady Arbelle.
Thesis Chapters by Eric Dunnum
This dissertation argues that early modern playwrights used metadrama to construct the experience... more This dissertation argues that early modern playwrights used metadrama to construct the experience and concept of playgoing for their audiences. By staging playgoing in front of playgoers, playwrights sought to teach their audiences how to attend a play and how to react to a performance. This type of instruction was possible, and perhaps necessary, because in early modern London attending a professionally produced play with thousands of other playgoers was a genuinely new cultural activity, so no established tradition of playgoing existed. Thus, playwrights throughout the era from John Lyly to Richard Brome attempted to invent playgoing through their performances.
The first chapter argues that this construction of playgoing was heavily influenced by the politics and economics of the London playhouses. Throughout the early modern era, London magistrates and puritan antitheatrical writers viewed performances as producing the immoral, unruly and often riotous actions of the audiences. And they used these reactions to performances as an excuse to close the playhouses and punish the playwrights. In order to keep the playhouses open and their livelihoods intact, playwrights had to keep their audiences from reacting to drama. Each subsequent chapter traces a method playwrights employed to limit audience reaction. The second chapter demonstrates that playwrights tried to limit the effect performances had on their audiences by dramatizing playgoers who were not affected by drama, thereby discouraging audiences from seeing themselves as the object of performance. The third chapter shows how playwrights often satirized playgoers who reacted to performances in order to stigmatize audience reaction. The final two chapters challenge the commonly held critical opinion that playwrights were working within a humanist interpretive tradition, which linked reading, imitation and praxis. Instead, I suggest that playwrights attempted to keep audiences from actively interpreting their performances in order to limit audience reaction. The study concludes by comparing Hamlet with The Duchess of Malfi and argues that Webster’s play (and not as commonly thought Hamlet) is a representative and comprehensive example of the early modern construction of playgoing.
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Papers by Eric Dunnum
Thesis Chapters by Eric Dunnum
The first chapter argues that this construction of playgoing was heavily influenced by the politics and economics of the London playhouses. Throughout the early modern era, London magistrates and puritan antitheatrical writers viewed performances as producing the immoral, unruly and often riotous actions of the audiences. And they used these reactions to performances as an excuse to close the playhouses and punish the playwrights. In order to keep the playhouses open and their livelihoods intact, playwrights had to keep their audiences from reacting to drama. Each subsequent chapter traces a method playwrights employed to limit audience reaction. The second chapter demonstrates that playwrights tried to limit the effect performances had on their audiences by dramatizing playgoers who were not affected by drama, thereby discouraging audiences from seeing themselves as the object of performance. The third chapter shows how playwrights often satirized playgoers who reacted to performances in order to stigmatize audience reaction. The final two chapters challenge the commonly held critical opinion that playwrights were working within a humanist interpretive tradition, which linked reading, imitation and praxis. Instead, I suggest that playwrights attempted to keep audiences from actively interpreting their performances in order to limit audience reaction. The study concludes by comparing Hamlet with The Duchess of Malfi and argues that Webster’s play (and not as commonly thought Hamlet) is a representative and comprehensive example of the early modern construction of playgoing.
The first chapter argues that this construction of playgoing was heavily influenced by the politics and economics of the London playhouses. Throughout the early modern era, London magistrates and puritan antitheatrical writers viewed performances as producing the immoral, unruly and often riotous actions of the audiences. And they used these reactions to performances as an excuse to close the playhouses and punish the playwrights. In order to keep the playhouses open and their livelihoods intact, playwrights had to keep their audiences from reacting to drama. Each subsequent chapter traces a method playwrights employed to limit audience reaction. The second chapter demonstrates that playwrights tried to limit the effect performances had on their audiences by dramatizing playgoers who were not affected by drama, thereby discouraging audiences from seeing themselves as the object of performance. The third chapter shows how playwrights often satirized playgoers who reacted to performances in order to stigmatize audience reaction. The final two chapters challenge the commonly held critical opinion that playwrights were working within a humanist interpretive tradition, which linked reading, imitation and praxis. Instead, I suggest that playwrights attempted to keep audiences from actively interpreting their performances in order to limit audience reaction. The study concludes by comparing Hamlet with The Duchess of Malfi and argues that Webster’s play (and not as commonly thought Hamlet) is a representative and comprehensive example of the early modern construction of playgoing.