Tag Archives: scholarlycriticism

Selective Amnesia in Shakespeare’s 1Henry IV

The characters from Shakespeare’s 1Henry IV are engaged in constant forgetting as it appears that forgetting is a tool, used by characters throughout the play to achieve their through actions. Literary critic Greenblatt discusses the play in terms of producing and containing subversion and disorder, and forgetting is to some scholars what drives the chaos. According to Jonni Koonce Dunn (Ph.D), forgetting is not just the absence of memory but also a coordinated erasure “conducive to re-imagination and re-inscription” (4). Continue reading →

Francis Bacon and Rodrigo Lopez: Localizing xenophobia and homophobia in Elizabethan Micropolitics

If we probe into what Jim O’Rourke over at Florida State University calls the late 16th century “micro-politics” of Tudor England, we arrive at the interplay of Elizabethan prejudice, humor and self-hatred. O’Rourke is engaged in a debate with other scholars and his goal is to re-frame The Merchant of Venice as an anti-racist work that was written in response to the high profile case of Francis Bacon and Rodrigo Lopez in 1594, but his efforts are most helpful in localizing the themes of xenophobia and homophobia in the immediate historical moment of the play. Continue reading →