Problematising Petrarchism: Shakespeare’s Varying Responses to an Elizabethan Cult

This dissertation is concerned with Shakespeare’s varied, rich and multifaceted responses to the cult of Petrarchism in Elizabethan England in selected sonnets, narrative poems and plays. I start by providing a sense of the historical tradition of Petrarchism both in general and in its various manifestations in the culture of Elizabethan England in the 1590s, as well as determining its key features. I then use techniques of close reading and critical analysis to explore Shakespeare’s treatment of Petrarchism across a wide range of texts and according to a selection of topics. The first topic is his satirical treatment of conventional conceits in selected comedies (The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Love’s Labour’s Lost and As You Like It). The second topic is his depiction of an inverted Petrarchism and its implications in Venus and Adonis and All’s Well That Ends Well. The third topic is his exploration of the darker reaches of Petrarchan devotion and its consequences in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Rape of Lucrece, Titus Andronicus, Much Ado About Nothing, Cymbeline and Othello. Finally, I consider the simultaneous subversion and exploitation of Petrarchan rhetoric in his Dark Lady sonnets. Through this analysis, I suggest that Shakespeare consistently uses these texts to question, both satirically and seriously, the idealism inherent in the vision and accompanying rhetoric of the Petrarchan tradition. Moreover, I argue that in his Dark Lady sonnets, Shakespeare does not simply dismiss and subvert Petrarchism, but revitalises it in his depiction of an imperfect lover’s Petrarchan devotion to, and realistic relationship with, his flawed mistress. In this way, Shakespeare shows that Petrarchism can be detached from its idealising tradition and assume new meanings in contexts which require the expressive power of its topoi to illustrate complex psychological and emotional states reminiscent of those articulated in Petrarch’s Canzoniere (1470).

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Lenahan, P.C.

• Shakespeare
• Petrarch
• Canzoniere
• Petrarchism
• Shakespeare’s comedies
• Shakespeare’s Sonnets
• Othello
• Venus and Adonis
• The Rape of Lucrece
• satire
• inversion.

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/2263/110039

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/110039