Publication Date
5-2020
Date of Final Oral Examination (Defense)
4-2-2020
Type of Culminating Activity
Thesis
Degree Title
Master of Arts in English Literature
Department
English
Supervisory Committee Chair
Matthew Hansen, Ph.D.
Supervisory Committee Member
Reshmi Mukherjee, Ph.D.
Supervisory Committee Member
Jennifer Black, Ph.D.
Abstract
Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy has been widely-read by the academic community, but not always for its own sake. Its influence on the Revenge Tragedy genre, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, have been common topics, sometimes at the expense of readings that engage with the play itself. This thesis continues a tradition of applying the ideas of Michel Foucault to the Early Modern era in order to interrogate the role of power, knowledge, and sovereignty. This thesis explores the way that Michel Foucault’s theory of biopolitics, and the related concepts of necropolitics and necroresistance, create significant new ways of understanding the characters and themes of Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy. I first examine Bel-Imperia’s presence in the text, as both a woman and a political pawn, and argue that her physical body exists in a contested space, serving as both a location for control and a means of resistance. By reinterpreting her role in the revenge narrative and her suicide through a political lens, we can more fully appreciate her violent actions as expressions of agency in pursuit of a calculated goal. Additionally, when we look at the stories of Hieronimo and Horatio through a necropolitical lens, it foregrounds the centrality of class in the conflict of the play. Through a close reading of Horatio’s murder, I argue that Horatio and Hieronimo represent the threat of social mobility to the insular aristocratic class embodied by Lorenzo and Balthazar, and Horatio’s murder serves as a reassertion of absolute sovereign control. Hieronimo’s violent actions carry different implications when we are able to read them as not only acts of vengeance, but also, to some extent, of revolution. Ultimately, I argue that applying biopolitical theories to The Spanish Tragedy, and other plays from the Early Modern era, presents scholars with an opportunity to differently appreciate the relationship between agency and violence, and make sense of the seemingly senseless violence that often characterizes these works.
DOI
10.18122/td/1651/boisestate
Recommended Citation
Jansen, Madison, "Necropolitical Resistance in Early Modern Drama: Violence and Death as Agentive Acts in Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy" (2020). Boise State University Theses and Dissertations. 1651.
10.18122/td/1651/boisestate