Timon of Athens (1606?) and Timon (1602?): Rhetorical and Ritualistic Violence

• Authors: Steve Orman
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article seeks to explore representations of theatrical anger in William Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton’s Timon of Athens (1606?) and a play written by students from one of the Inns of Court, the Inner Temple, entitled Timon, written and performed at the Inn circa 1602. The article is concerned with two types of violence exhibited in both plays; rhetorical violence and ritualistic violence. Early modern rhetorical violence is self-consciously performative and manipulative compared to ritualistic violence which is unbridled and emasculating; a bodily performance that cannot be controlled via self-regulation. By exploring cultural perceptions of anger, this article attempts to account for the range of violence performed by the two Timons.

Keywords

EN

Timon of Athens; violence; drunkenness; Inns of Court; masculinity; Early Modern youth culture

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Studia Anglica Posnaniensia
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 48
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 85-99

Dates

published

2013-06-01

online

2013-11-09

Contributors

author

Steve Orman

• Canterbury Christ Church University, UK

References

• Anonymous 1616 Keepe within compasse; or, the worthy legacy of a wise father to his beloved sonne. London. 1616 The office of Christian parents: Shewing how children are to be governed throughoutall ages and times of their Life. Cambridge. 1966 Timon. Narrative and dramatic sources of Shakespeare. Vol. 4 (Edited by Geoffrey Bullough.) London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 297-339. 1980 Timon. The Malone Society. (Edited by J. C. Bulman and J. M. Nosworthy.) Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Crooke, Helkiah 1616 Microcosmographia: A description of the body of man. London.
• Gouge, William 1622 Of domesticall duties. London.
• Heywood, Thomas 1635 Philocothonista, or, the drunkard, opened, dissected, and anatomized. London.
• Nashe, Thomas 1964 Pierce Penniless his supplication to the devil. Thomas Nashe: Selected works. (Edited by Stanley Wells.) London: Edward Arnold.
• Raleigh, Sir Walter 1632 Sir Walter Raleighs instructions to his sonne and posterity. London.
• Shakespeare, William and Thomas Middleton 2004 Timon of Athens. The Oxford Shakespeare. (Edited by John Jowett.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008 Timon of Athens. The Arden Shakespeare. (Edited by Anthony B. Dawson and Gretchen E. Minton.) London: Cengage.
• Young, Thomas 1617 Englands bane: Or the description of drunkennesse. London.
• Bulman, James C. 1974 “The date and production of Timon reconsidered”, Shakespeare Survey 27: 111-127.[Crossref]
• Capp, Bernard 2003 When gossips meet: Women, family, and neighbourhood in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Chalk, Darryl 2009 “‘A nature but infected’: Plague and embodied transformation in Timon of Athens”, Early Modern Literary Studies 19: 1-28.
• Foyster, Elizabeth A. 1999 Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, sex, and marriage. London: Longman.
• Gowing, Laura 1998 Domestic dangers: Women, words, and sex in Early Modern London. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Grady, Hugh 2009 Shakespeare and impure aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Jowett, John 2004 “Introduction” to Shakespeare and Middleton’s Timon of Athens. Oxford: Oxford Shakespeare.
• Kennedy, Gwynne 2000 Just anger: Representing women’s anger in Early Modern England. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
• MacFaul, Tom 2007 Male friendship in Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Pierce, Robert B. 2002 “Tragedy and Timon of Athens”, Comparative Drama 36/1-2: 75-90.[Crossref]
• Scott, William O. 1984 “The paradox of Timon’s self-cursing”, Shakespeare Quarterly 35/3: 290-304.[Crossref]
• Shepard, Alexandra 2003 Meanings of manhood in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Tambling, Jeremy 2000 “Hating man in Timon of Athens”, Essays in Criticism 50/2: 145-168.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/stap-2013-0004