1) This chapter is a monster (~12,000 words at this point with a long way left to go), mostly because I have so much to say about one specific play (one of three that inspired the whole dissertation concept to begin with), but it's only one of many texts under discussion overall. I'm tired, but also too
obsessed opinionated interested in my topic and in doing right by
my guy a very relevant playwright to cut it short. On one level it's fun and another aghhhhhhhhhhh
2) One of the fun/exhausting aspects of studying early modern literature (mostly plays for me) is that there's typically 400 years of accumulated scholarship to discuss in the course of positioning my argument and, well, actually making my argument. I actually enjoy the 50s-80s early modernist scholars quite a bit because they're less infected by Victorian traditions than the earlier ones, but less entrenched in fixing on One Theoretical Lens To Rule Them All and saccharine semi-corporate bullshitting that infects a lot of modern academia. So if they think someone's argument is bad, they'll just say so. Like, I kind of love this debate over the incestuous subtext (barely subtext) of
The Duchess of Malfi where Louis Giannetti snaps out in a footnote, "Finally, he [F. L. Lucas] concedes that incest might be a possibility—'a suggestion, and an inessential one' (p. 34). How Professor Lucas can dismiss incest as 'inessential' staggers the mind" (307n14). Tell us what you really feel, Professor Giannetti!
(F. L. Lucas himself was a truly remarkable figure in Webster studies and
also 1930s British anti-appeasement and anti-fascism. His Webster takes are a little wonky but it kind of feels less significant in the grand scheme of things. He didn't have the focus of later Webster scholars but given that his extremely varying interests included raging at the British press and government, helping refugees, putting fascist hate mail from Ezra Pound on display, and ultimately running an intelligence cell to fight Nazis, it's hard to care that much. He also wrote a sci-fi novella about overpopulation and, apparently, global warming in 1937.)
3) Anyway, I was going over
The Duchess of Malfi and some of Ferdinand's many creepy, purity-obsessed speeches/threats to his sister, and stumbled over this one:
Your darkest actions: nay, your privat'st thoughts
Will come to light
me, wearily: Okay, Horde Prime.
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