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– Lily Campbell’s argument for each tragedy’s ruling passion, John Draper’s naming of each character’s temperament. 2 Of special interest is Paster’s work: passions in English Renaissance drama closely relate to bodily elements and humoral fluids, though some characters boast a ‘humour’ just to gain social status. I am deeply indebted to Paster, but seek to widen her materialist
6 Ungovernable passions: intoxication and Romanticism He will come to know it, whenever he shall arrive in that state in which, paradoxical as it may appear, reason shall only visit him through intoxication. (Charles Lamb) Hence the drunkard ceases to attend to external stimuli, and as volition is now also suspended, the trains of his ideas become totally inconsistent as in dreams or delirium. (Erasmus Darwin) The question above all others that nagged at philosophers, political thinkers and doctors throughout the eighteenth century was: ‘What is it to be human
2 Appetites, passions, and disgust: the penalties and paradoxes of unmanliness Introduction Unmanliness was emblazoned on emotionalised bodies, written onto illformed, unappealing forms and faces, and deployed through disgust, the very antitheses of desire. This too had physiognomic roots and moral associations. Johann Caspar Lavater, for example, explained: ‘the morally best, the most beautiful. The morally worst, the most deformed.’1 Eighteenth-century British moral philosophers similarly drew analogies between the corporeal and the moral, applying a
IN THE STUDY OF Renaissance emotion, especially in relation to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, it doesn’t take long before coming across the work of Thomas Wright ( c. 1561–1623). 1 His The Passions of the Minde in Generall , first published in 1601, has become something of a touchstone for literary scholars, offering
Elemental Passions CHAPTER 4 Interpretive synopsis of Elemental Passions One: prologue The first chapter can be regarded as a Prologue. Irigaray begins with short, staccato sentences. White. Immense spaces. White, a rush of breath. Be swift, marry this breath. Remain in it. Make haste. Let it not abandon me. Let me not turn from it. Be swept up: my song. (EP 7) De grands espaces. Blancs. Un grand souffle, blanc. Rapide, épouser ce souffle. Y rester. Dans la hâte. Qu’il ne m’abandonne pas. Que je ne le laisse pas.Y être entraînée : mon chant. (Pe 7) The short
no expense in pursuing his passion – the building of a hothouse stood testament to his botanical ambitions. 111 He employed a gardener, Joseph Knight, who resided full time on the property, tending to the collection. Knight remained in George’s employ until the family removed from Clapham in 1820, at which point he gave Knight his living collection. Knight went on to form the
of the tragedies, especially King Lear, the impoverished venue where epiphany gains full effect in Shakespeare’s works. Lear’s empathetic defence of Tom, the Bethlehem beggar who is terrified of fiends and obsessed with his sins, matches Southwell’s allegory of the Passion in Spiritual Exercises
promised to eradicate bad passions. As he told the inhabitants of New Lanark: ‘When these great errors shall be removed, all our evil passions will disappear; no ground of anger or displeasure from one human being towards another will remain; the period of the supposed Millennium will commence, and universal love prevail.’ 1 While Owen shared with other radicals the belief that conditions could and should
418 7 Brian Moore, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955): abandonment But what if the godless were right …? We are quite a few pages into The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne before discovering Judith Hearne’s drinking habit,1 and it is then that we begin to realise how her drinking is entangled with a growing intimation that God is no longer part of her life. Alienated through ostensibly social causes such as her ‘odd duck’ physical appearance and family responsibility, the character’s dulling of reality through drink is also her response to the kind of
year, which together brought distant moments into close proximity. 15 With its propensity to bring different moments together, Serres’ topology is particularly suited to the discussion of intermediary spaces, or what Kathleen Biddick calls ‘unhistorical temporalities’. 16 The Nativity plays partake of such an intermediary space because Christ has come, but has not yet died. As the following examination of the gospel shows, this is a moment which falls awkwardly between Passover and Passion, Hebrew and Christian law, Incarnation and Crucifixion, and prophecy and