Notes and summary of Renaissance self-fashioning

 

Renaissance self-fashioning

Before beginning lets understand some important terms

1-          New historicism- it was coined in 1980s by Stephen Greenblatt and is a form of literary theory. It means to understand intellectual history through literature and recovering lost histories. It includes paying close attention to historical context of literary works. New historicists see power as class related extending through society.

2-     New criticism- it was coined in 19^th century by John Crow Ransom and was a formalist movement.  It dominated American literary criticism in mid-20^th century. It puts emphasis on close reading to discover how literature functioned as self- contained, self-referential aesthetic object. It forgets about the author and focusses only on text. It studies how literature affects us intellectually and emotionally, before this it was all about history.

3-    Utopia- it was coined by Thomas more in 1516. It describes non-existent society. It is about an imagined community where government laws and social conditions are perfect.

4-     Intentional fallacy- fallacy of basing an assessment of a work on author’s intention rather than on one’s response to actual work.

5-     Affective fallacy- refers to the supposed error of judging or evaluating a text on the basis of emotional effect on a reader. It is an attack on impressionistic criticism.

Stephen Greenblatt belonged to the school of new historicism. The subject is ‘self- fashioning from More to Shakespeare – starting point 16^th century England. He talks about six main figures Wyatt, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spencer, More and Tyndale

There was less autonomy in self –fashioning in 16^th century; family, state, religion imposed discipline on middle and aristocratic families. The major issue is of power; power to impose a shape upon oneself and to control identity of others.

Perception is central- it’s old in academic writing and in early modern period there is a change in intellectual, social, psychological and aesthetic structures which govern the identity. This change is resolutely dialectical hence difficult to characterize.

In 16^th century there was an increased self- consciousness about fashioning of human identity as manipulable artful process. This self- consciousness was widespread among elites but Christianity brought suspicion of man’s power to shape identity.

In 1539 Spencer says ‘fashioned’ means to “fashion a gentleman”. Fashion does not occur in Chaucer’s poetry.

Fashion- 1-Action or process of making

                2- Particular features or appearance

                3- Distinct style of pattern

                4- Designating the forming of a self

Fashioning may suggest the achievement of a less tangible shape, distinctive personality, characteristic address to the world, consistent mode of perceiving and behaving. Recurrent model for fashioning is Christ.  Separation from imitation of Christ leads to anxiety thus self -fashioning acquires a new range of meaning, it describes practice of parents and teachers, linked to manners or demeanor (of elite) can suggest hypocrisy or deception. Representation of one’s nature or intention is in speech or actions.

Interest of self-fashioning- it functions without distinction between literature and social life

What self-fashioning does?

1-          Crosses boundaries between literary characters

2-     Shapes one’s identity

3-    Experience of being modeled by forces outside one’s control

4-     Attempt to fashion other selves

We begin to lose meaning in culture by differentiating between literary and behavioral style.

Geertz meaning of culture- set of control mechanisms- plans, recipes, rules, instructions for governing behavior. Greenblatt counts it as a virtue; older historicism talked about every kind of knowledge is historically constructed.

“I”- it is not I of an individual; it is the individual who questions and is everything (social and political). It shows a specific form of power (church, state, patriarch etc.)

There are very small amount of people who promise to access to larger cultural patterns. There is a will to be culture’s voice among artists; they wish to create the abstract and brief chronicles of all time. In early 16^th century art didn’t pretend to be autonomous, the written word is self-consciously embedded in specific communities, life- situations and structures of power. We don’t have access to figures of shared culture, we have to access to the writings of dead and speech of the contemporary.

All these famous men like Shakespeare, Spencer, and Marlowe came into a social sphere where they could be in contact with the powerful and great. All knew people with no power, status or education. They could not be mobile in sociological sense but they had geographical and ideological mobility.

The six writers- Wyatt, Tyndale, Spencer, Marlowe, More and Shakespeare are displaced. They are not from a stable, inherited social world but they all have something powerful and influential form of renaissance self- fashioning. Aspects are still difficult.

1-Conflict between More and Tyndale is Wyatt.

2-Conflict between Spencer and Marlowe is Shakespeare

Wyatt’s self-fashioning is affected by the conflict between More and Tyndale. Shakespeare does not resolve the moral conflict. Still his theatre was influenced by both Spencer and Marlowe.

Wyatt and Shakespeare express the historical pressure of an unresolved and continuing conflict. Issues at theological level in work of More and Tyndale are recaptured at secular level in Spencer and Marlowe’s works. While Shakespeare works with male sexual anxieties, betrayal, and aggression in Othello. Complexity in one’s own torment was voiced in Wyatt’s lyrics.

Direction in relation to power-

1-          1^st  Triad- shift from church to book to absolutist state

2-     2^nd Triad- shift from celebration to rebellion to subversive submission

We can assume a direction enacted by works of literature in relation to society: shift from absorption by community, religious faith or diplomacy towards establishment of literary creation as a profession. Such approximate and scheming chartings are of limited value. The closer we go to these figures they seem less convenient counters in historical scheme.

No single “history of self” was there in the 16^th century except when complex and creative beings were to be reduced to safe and controllable order.

A set of governing conditions common to most instances of self- fashioning are-

1.               No figure has a title, ancient family tradition or hierarchical status that would have fired identity in particular class.

2.          For these figures self-fashioning is submitting to an absolute power or authority like God, sacred book, court, church etc. Marlowe was an exception.

3.         Self-fashioning is achieved in relation to something perceived as alien or strange. This strange must be discovered and destroyed.

4.          The alien is something unformed or chaotic or that which is false or negative. The chaotic slides into demonic and thus it’s constructed as a distorted image of authority.

5.          One man’s authority is another man’s alien.

6.          When one authority or alien is destroyed, another takes its place.

7.           There is always more than one authority and more than one alien in existence at a given time.

8.          If both the authority and the alien are located outside the self, they are at the same time experienced as inward necessities, so that both submission and destruction are always already internalized.

9.          Self- fashioning is always, though not exclusively, in language.

10. The power generated to attack the alien in the name of authority is produced in excess and threatens the authority it sets out to defend.

Hence self-fashioning involves threat, some wiping out or loss of self

Self-fashioning occurs at the point of encounter between authority and alien. Any achieved identity always contains within itself signs of its own loss.

Deepali Yadav

Contact me @ deepaliyadav2896@gmail.com

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