Supervisors info:
Βασιλική Μαρκίδου, Αναπληρώτρια Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Ασπασία Βελισσαρίου, Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Μαρία Γερμανού, Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Summary:
Drawing extensively on Graeco-Roman mythology, John Lyly’s comedies delve into love and its effects upon their characters. As a recurrent theme, love is diversified not only in its manifestations, but also in its dramatic representation (affection/lust). Its centrality to the plot is highlighted through its consistent theatrical embodiment by Cupid, who becomes the protagonist in several Lylian plays, and unfolds his evolving polymorphism through dramatic action. Cupid’s portrayals as child, adolescent, and grown-up are witnessed in a linear manner in three comedies which, along with their partial textual interaction, allow their collective examination as a trilogy: Sappho and Phao (1584), Galatea (1592), and Love’s Metamorphosis (1601). Viewing Cupid as the common thread binding the comedies together, I aim to explore the unsettlement as well as the redefinition of social and principally of gender hierarchy through their representations of love as erotic desire. Because it is perceived as a masculine privilege, desire ascribes agency to the objectified female when it is feminised, emerging thus as a politically inflected matter. In probing into issues of gender and sexuality in relation to patriarchally demarcated social roles, I use Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble to suggest that Lyly’s characters perform gender to oppose the (early modern) societal and cultural norms imposed upon their sexual identities, rather than follow and, hence, abide by them. Similarly, the dramatic representation of homoeroticism and of sexual practices as alternatives to institutionalised marital monogamy becomes a conscious effort on the dramatist’s part to destabilise heteronormativity, and reappraise femininity. The staging of such tropes, in turn, theatricalises desire by stimulating it through vision, which enables the investigation of the interrelationship between desire and sensory loss, especially blindness. Laura Mulvey’s theoretical framework and concept of the “male gaze” is conducive to this task, facilitating an examination of the power dynamics between subject and object of desire within the process of sexual negotiation. Although such ideas are articulated halfway and are ultimately silenced due to the censorship of his time, Lyly’s radicalism still lies between the lines of his plays, rendering him a proto-feminist. Therefore, this dissertation embraces as well as addresses the prospect of critically appreciating Lyly’s drama, which remains overshadowed by the dramatist’s canonical contemporaries.
Keywords:
John Lyly, gender, erotic desire, comedies, trilogy
