William Shakespeare and John Donne - Stages of the Soul in Early Modern English Poetry

William Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece and John Donne's Holy Sonnets are read against the background of concepts of the soul during the early modern period. This approach provides new insights into concepts of interiority and performance as well as a new understanding of the soliloquy in both poetry and drama.

List of contents

Introduction: stages of the soul and drama in poetry

Part I William Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece and the drama of the soul
1 Motivating the myth: allegory and psychology
2 'Thou art not what thou seem'st': Tarquin's inner stage and outer action
3 'But with my body my poor soul's pollution': Lucrece, her body, and soul
4 Lust-breathed Tarquin - Lucrece, the name of chaste: antagonism, parallelism, and chiasmus

Part II John Donne's Holy Sonnets and the so(u)le-talk of the soul
5 Divine comedies: the speaker, his soul, and the poem as stage
6 The sonnet as miniature drama: Donne's Holy Sonnet 'Oh my black Soule'
7 Sole-talk and soul-talk: Donne's so(u)liloquies in the Holy Sonnets
8 The speaker on the stage of the poem: Holy Sonnet 'This is my Playes last Scene'
9 Dialogue and antagonism in Donne's theatre of the soul

Part III Conclusion
10 So(u)le-talk, self, and stages of the soul

Bibliography
Index

About the author

Angelika Zirker is Assistant Professor of English Philology (English Literature and Culture) at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany

Summary

William Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece and John Donne’s Holy Sonnets are read against the background of concepts of the soul during the early modern period. This approach provides new insights into concepts of interiority and performance as well as a new understanding of the soliloquy in both poetry and drama. -- .

Product details

• Authors: Angelika Zirker, Zirker Angelika
• Assisted by: Tamsin Badcoe (Editor)
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 28.02.2019
• EAN: 9781526133298
• ISBN: 978-1-5261-3329-8
• No. of pages: 280
• Series: The Manchester Spenser; Manchester Spenser Mup; The Manchester Spenser; Manchester Spenser Mup
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; English, LITERARY CRITICISM / Shakespeare, POETRY / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary studies: poetry & poets, Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800, Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800, Shakespeare Studies & Criticism, Literary studies: poetry and poets, Relating to Shakespeare / Shakespearean