Thicker than water : blood, affinity, and hegemony in early modern drama / Lauren Weindling.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weindling, Lauren, 1986- author.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Strode studies in early modern literature and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

European drama--Renaissance, 1450-1600--History and criticism.

European drama.

Humanity--Drama--History and criticism.

Humanity.

Blood in literature.

Love in literature.

Kinship in literature.

European drama--Renaissance.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Literary criticism.

Physical Description:

x, 273 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 24 cm.

Other Title:

Blood, affinity, and hegemony in early modern drama

Place of Publication:

Tuscaloosa : The University of Alabama Press, [2023]

Summary:

"The proverb goes that "blood is thicker than water." But do common bloodlines in fact demand special duties or prescribe affections? Does this maxim presume that we can or should only love others biologically similar to ourselves? Are we nobler if we do, or somehow defective if we don't? "Thicker than Water" examines the roots of this belief by studying the omnipresent discourse of bloodlines and kindred relations in the literature of early modern Europe, specifically its role in the creation and maintenance of oppressive social structures. Lauren Weindling examines how drama from England, France, and Italy tests these assumptions about blood and love, exposing their underlying political function. Among the key texts that Weindling studies are Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and The Merchant of Venice, Pierre Corneille's Le Cid, Giambattista della Porta's La Sorella and its English analog, Thomas Middleton's No Wit/Help Like a Woman's, John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, and Machiavelli's La Mandragola. Each of these plays in some way offers an extreme limit case for these beliefs in plots of love, courtship, and marriage (e.g., blood feuds or incest). They also illustrate that blood functions not as a biological basis for affinities, but discursively. Moreover, they feature the voices of marginalized groups, unprivileged by this ideology, which present significant counterpoints to this bloody worldview. Those outsiders reveal that finding alternative vocabularies to the bloody discourse of elite groups is both extremely difficult and often ineffectual, further evidenced by their persistence today. Much critical work on blood has examined this discourse as it manifests onstage: as evidence of guilt, the product of violence, or in bleeding figures. This book, instead, examines the work that blood does unseen in its connection to discourses of love and kinship-arbitrating social and emotional connections between persons, and thus underwriting our deepest forms of social organization"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. Feuding Bloods and Bloody Romance

2. When Blood Cries: Incest and Bloody Affinity

3. Bed Tricks and Bloodlines, or All's Well That Ends with a Baby

4. "Commend Me to My Kind Lord": Love In Difference.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [235]-264) and index.

ISBN:

9780817321482

0817321489

9780817361013

0817361014

OCLC:

1345466825