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Home CCSU Theses & Dissertations Criminals and artists : rebellion and power in Shakespearean self-creation / Karen C. Piantek

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Criminals and artists : rebellion and power in Shakespearean self-creation / Karen C. Piantek

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Identifier	Thesis 1769
Author	Piantek, Karen C., 1977-
Title	Criminals and artists : rebellion and power in Shakespearean self-creation / Karen C. Piantek
Publisher	Central Connecticut State University
Date	2004
Resource Type	Master's Thesis
Notes	This thesis explores the idea of the "artist" as a figure of self-creation in the development of identity (both in and through literature) using a number of Shakespeare's protagonists to exemplify the different stages of evolution, especially Brutus in Julius Caesar, Hamlet in Hamlet, and Prospero in The Tempest. It examines how, as prospective artists, they attempt to develop or maintain, knowingly or unknowingly, their own distinct identities by creating something that in some way represents the personal values and sense of meaning to which they adhere in life. Drawing on Stephen Greenblatt's model of the Marlovian antihero to show how the rejection and replacement of a perceived authority can be used as a means to establish identity, this thesis will examine how the state functions both as an institution of social control and as a political canvas on which an artist may work. Marlowe's antihero as Greenblatt interprets him is remarkably similar to Friedrich Nietzsche's übermensch, and many of Nietzsche's ideas, as well as those of like-minded philosophers, are used to show how an artist must first pass through a "criminal stage" in which he destroys or rejects the authoritative works and values of those before him before replacing them with his own. The primary metaphorical figures in the thesis, the criminal and the artist, are in fact ideologically drawn from Nietzsche's own theories on the "higher man." An introductory chapter explores and expands upon the intricacies of this basic theory, especially as it relates to both Shakespeare and his character creations, while the following chapters apply it using several different modes. The chapter on Julius Caesar discusses why Brutus (as opposed to Antony) fails as a political artist when he neglects to definitively replace Caesar as the authority in Rome after the murder. The third chapter shows how Hamlet finds it Qfficult to complete his criminal stage of artistic development because he clings to the Ghost as a representative of paternal authority. Only in the fourth chapter is the artist of self-creation fully realized when Prospero uses his "art" to create a brave new world based on his own values, desires, and, indeed, his own sense of justice. Unlike Brutus and Hamlet who monomaniacally pursue their objectives to the bitter end, however, Prospero eventually abandons his desire for revenge and relinquishes his art so that Miranda, his child and the perpetuator of his legacy, may begin her own journey of self-creation as part of a cycle of artistic immortality. Using this idea as its jumping off point, then, the final chapter of this study explores the connection between creation and childbirth through Prospero as both a father and the head of a political state. Moreover, by incorporating the Renaissance association of childbirth with literary creation in particular, this chapter considers the symbolic concepts of artistic birth, death and immortality in not only the Shakespearean characters previously discussed, but in the poet himself. Just as his heroes fashion themselves through personal acts of creation, so too does Shakespeare the author live, die and spiritually immortalize himself through the creation of his literary art.
Subject	Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Characters -- Heroes Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Criticism and interpretation
Department	Department of English
Advisor	Cohen, Stephen
Type	Text
Digital Format	application/pdf
Language	eng
OCLC number	57686353
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Home CCSU Theses & Dissertations Criminals and artists : rebellion and power in Shakespearean self-creation / Karen C. Piantek

Criminals and artists : rebellion and power in Shakespearean self-creation / Karen C. Piantek

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