Rappresentazione della corporalità nei sonetti di Shakespeare

Dipartimento di Discipline umanistiche, Sociali e delle Imprese

Culturali

Corso di laurea in Civiltà e Lingue Straniere Moderne

RAPPRESENTAZIONE DELLA CORPORALITÀ NEI

SONETTI DI SHAKESPEARE

Relatore:

Chiar.ma Prof.ssa Gioia Angeletti

Correlatore: Diego Saglia

Chiar.mo Prof. Laureanda:

Adriana Danese

Anno Accademico

2022 / 2023

INDICE

INTRODUZIONE.................................................................................................................1

CAPITOLO I: LA TEORIA DEGLI UMORI

1.1 Le origini..........................................................................................................................6

1.2 La medicina Rinascimentale e la melancolia...................................................................8

1.3 L’influenza della teoria nelle opere di Shakespeare.......................................................10

1.4 Analisi del sonetto 129...................................................................................................12

CAPITOLO II: LA SCALA DELL’ESSERE

2.1 La teoria ........................................................................................................................15

2.2 La teoria nel Rinascimento ed il ruolo dei generi..........................................................17

2.3 Il ruolo dei generi in Shakespeare..................................................................................19

2.4 Analisi del sonetto 137...................................................................................................20

CAPITOLO III: IRREALTÀ DEGLI STEREOTIPI

3.1 I canoni estetici rinascimentali.......................................................................................22

3.2Analisi del sonetto 130....................................................................................................23

3.3 La misoginia nei sonetti di Shakespeare........................................................................25

3.4 Analisi del sonetto 144...................................................................................................26

CONCLUSIONI...................................................................................................................28

BIBLIOGRAFIA E SITOGRAFIA......................................................................................30

INTRODUCTION

As is well known, for several years, from 1603 to 1604 London theaters were closed

due to a plague epidemic, so Shakespeare dedicated himself also to poetic writings. His

poetic production encompasses an extensive array of poetic forms, which includes 154

sonnets and the two narrative poems “Venus and Adonis” and “The Rape of Lucrece”, all

renowned for their poetic language, rich imagery, and complex wordplay. The collection of

sonnets was written between 1593 and 1599 and was first published in a quarto by Thomas

Thorpe in 1609.

The Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnet consists of fourteen lines in an iambic

pentameter, divided into three quatrains and a concluding rhyming couplet, and has since

become a standard form for sonnet writing. Shakespeare’s collection of sonnets is divided

into two sections. The first part, until sonnet 126, is dedicated to the fair youth, while the

succeeding ones (sonnets 127-154) concern the dark lady.

The first part of the collection has as protagonist a young man, or a “fair friend”

(Sonnet 104), with whom the speaking I has a deep and complex emotional connection. The

identity of the fair youth has never been established, but scholars have offered a number of

hypotheses, for instance that youth was only a literary invention or a real person in

Shakespeare’s life. As Allison Scott emphasizes, “the Sonnets never actually name the

‘young man’ to whom the majority are addressed, and therefore, the only personality to

‘shine more bright in these contents’ of the poem is the poet himself.” (Scott 2004: 315).

The main protagonist of the second part of the collection is a Dark Lady, an

unmanned mistress, whose identity remains uncertain, too. She is a mysterious figure that

embodies the opposite of Petrarchan beauty, from which all the sonnets written at that time

were inspired. With the dark-lady sonnets, Shakespeare transformed the traditional

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Petrarchan conventions of love and beauty. Hugh Richmond declares, Sonnet 130 “is not a

sign of hostility or even ambivalence on his part but an important step towards a modern,

realistic acceptance that should be neither contemptuously repudiated because of their

inevitable faults, nor willfully idealised in spite of them” (Richmond 1986: 91).

Academic investigations revealed the exploration of recurring traditional themes in

the sonnets, namely, fear of time, love, beauty, immortality of beauty and a different view of

the body. A significant theme is time, through which Shakespeare demonstrates his vision of

life, beauty, and art, revealing his anxiety about the passing of time and the changes that it

provokes. The theme of immortality is evident in sonnet 19. The poet asks the “Devouring

Time” (Shakespeare 2008: 419, v.1) to make the youth’s beauty immortal, as an example of

perfection. Although Shakespeare is aware that everyone is destined for change and knows

that nature threatens the young man’s beauty, he knows that the youth will be immortal in

his sonnets and his beauty will be preserved.

Love is pictured in disparate ways, such as love to a friend, lack of love, and lust.

Shakespeare shows how love influences our lives, how it can make one strong and capable

of doing anything, but that, at the same time, it can also bring people to insanity and misery.

Throughout the complete collection, the type of love described is one that remains

dissatisfied. According to Michael Alexander, “Neither of the poet’s loves can be satisfied:

the worship of the young man, because he is a man; the love of a woman because it is lust.”

(Alexander 2000: 121). Sonnet 129 fully depicts lust and how it is provoked by the lover.

The point is that love should have led to enjoyment, to a state of well-being, but instead it

led to lust, to self-loathing.

Beauty is another prominent theme explicated in different Shakespeare’s sonnets, as

in sonnet 18. In this sonnet the young man is compared to a summer day and is described

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using elements of nature: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? / Thou art more lovely

and more temperate” (Shakespeare 2008: 417, vv.1-2). He embodies the conventional beauty

canons, but through this comparison it is shown how his beauty is superior even to nature.

Beauty as portrayed in the sonnets has two main faces: physical beauty pertains to the

aesthetics of the body and the gratification derived from sensual desires; and spiritual beauty

embodying an emotional fulfillment and joy that transcend mere sensual desires.

Critics have written about the linguistic creativity, the deployment of imagery, the

allusions to Greek and Roman mythology, and rhetorical devices in the sonnets. The use of

prosody and metaphors often allow a multitude of meanings. As Roston states, the metaphor

is the medium for the “exploration through human experience.” (Roston 1982: 183). It is

employed to depict feelings, experiences, ideas, simple reality, and presents us a view of the

world and life through the eyes of the author. In particular, as regards imagery and linguistic

choices, one should consider that, during the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages, the study of

new ways to perceive the human body and new discoveries in the fields of medicine were

prominent. Various theories about corporeality emerged. For instance, the Body politic is a

metaphorical concept that connects the political community to a human body. Its origins can

be traced back to ancient sources such as Plato’s Republic or Cicero’s treatises. This

metaphor has taken on various forms, with two key variations: it can be employed to

represent the community as a whole, or to illustrate the legal and political position of its

sovereign. In his seminal work The King’s Two Bodies (1957), Ernst Kantorowicz makes

clear that the Body politic led people to see the whole universe as a body, the state as a body

and the king and queen as a symbolic embodiment of the state.

That of “The King’s Two Bodies” is a political theory described first by King James

I of England in his treatise Basilikon Doron published in 1599. According to this theory, the

monarch has two bodies: a natural body and a corpus mysticum. The natural body is subject

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to ageing, is temporary, fallible, frail, and represents his human body; instead, the corpus

mysticum is eternal, divine and although the body will be ugly, deteriorated, or old, he will

always be divine. Shakespeare investigated the consequences of the clashes between the two

bodies, as it can be noticed in Shakespeare’s tragedy King Richard II (1595). The two bodies

generate tension and a conflict of interest between the obligations one has towards people,

the land, or one’s family, and the personal, physical desires and emotions of the self. This

theory had significant implications for the political and legal systems during the Elizabethan

era, and as underlined by Edward Forset in his Discourses (1606), and Kantorowicz, the

theory of the King’s two bodies reflects what is expected by all kings of England.

The critic Thomas Laqueur contends that prior to the 18th century different

prejudices existed whereby males and females were not equal (Laqueur 1990: 5). This belief

is known as “The One Sex model theory”, formulated by Aristotle and Galen, and

establishing that the male sex is the only one acceptable. The reason why citizens accepted

a queen on the throne was only because the queen was not defined according to sexuality

but considered as a divinity. This model was used by the scientists and scholars in that period

to explain sexual and gender differences. Nevertheless, in the 18th century the theory lost its

value by shifting to a ‘two-sexes’ model. This new vision was not due to biological

discoveries, but to political issues, so as to give more importance to the male sex than to the

female sex.

Women were defined as deficient men, and this is because people believed creation

was ordered according to the Chain of Being, a concept derived from Plato, expounded by

Aristotle in Historia Animalium (IV B.C.E.) and further developed during the Middle Ages.

The Great Chain depicts the universe as a hierarchical system, placing all living and non-

living things hierarchically organized by their inherent natures. It is a vertical order that

places God at the top, followed by angels, humans, animals, plants and finally minerals. Men

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are between angels and beasts, and women were in a lower position than men. This is a

patriarchal symbol of creation ranging from male perfection to female inadequacy.

A woman like Lady Macbeth, who aspires to be a man, in control and who disrupts

the natural order of the Great Chain, is seen as a sin, a perversion, unacceptable according

to the conventional canons. People idealized the female body as an enclosed garden, a little

paradise, beautiful only if it was sealed. Similarly, man is in constant danger of receding in

the Chain, if, like Macbeth, he does not act like a man. However, the concept of the Chain

of Being also reflected and reinforced the existing social hierarchies, emphasizing the

subservience of lower classes and non-human beings to those at the top of the chain.

According to the theory of the four humors, which is an idea that comes from the

ancient Greeks, the body is perceived as composed of four different humors or fluids: blood,

phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. People thought each man consists of a mixture of body

fluids and that his temperament, personality, and nature depend on what kind of fluid is in

abundance. When these four humors are in balance, a person is healthy. The theory of the

four humors began to emerge in the 17th century and was widely accepted in Elizabethan

medical practices. Numerous references to the humors also appear in Shakespeare’s works.

In this thesis Shakespeare’s sonnets will be examined taking into account the various

theories described above, showing the connection between language and the Elizabethan-

period theories of the human body. 5

CAPITOLO I

LA TEORIA DEGLI UMORI

1.1 Le origini

Intorno al V secolo a.C. i filosofi dell’antica Grecia iniziarono a sviluppare teorie

mediche e diversi approcci per studiare il comportamento e la mente umana. Al tempo,

le malattie mentali e fisiche venivano attribuite alla presenza di forze demoniache negli

uomini, senza considerare aspetti biologici e caratteriali. Oltre alla presenza di forze

soprannaturali, alcuni filosofi, tra cui Empedocle (492 a.C.), definirono quattro elementi

naturali (terra, acqua, aria e fuoco) alla base del mondo. Nella sua teoria ogni uomo era

composto da questi quattro elementi naturali e dagli umori da essi derivanti (Arikha

2009: 25). Ad ogni umore, erano associate due qualità caratteristiche di ciascun elemento

naturale affermando che, in condizioni di instabilità, questi “producevano tutto ciò che

poteva essere percepito” (Nutton 2004: 45).

L’origine della teoria degli umori è difficile da decifrare, in quanto proviene da un

insieme di studi, ricerche e idee provenienti da differenti scuole di pensiero filosofico,

dall’antico Egitto e della Mesopotamia. Le teorie dei filosofi presocratici dell’antica

Grecia vennero successivamente sviluppate da Ippocrate (460 a.C.), uno dei più

importanti medici della storia antica. Ippocrate delineò una nuova visione più scientifica

della teoria attribuendo ad ognuno dei quattro elementi naturali del mondo un elemento

del corpo umano. La teoria iniziò ad affermarsi tra gli scienziati e filosofi del tempo

ponendo le basi della medicina moderna. La teoria degli umori fu esposta nel De Natura

hominis dal suo discepolo Polibio: “Il corpo dell’uomo ha in sé sangue, flegma, bile

gialla e nera; questi costituiscono la natura del suo corpo e per causa loro soffre od è

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sano” (Vegetti 1976: 438). Come già anticipato nell’introduzione, solo quando questi

umori sono equilibrati, ovvero in quantità uguale, l’uomo è in salute; invece, se c’è troppa

abbondanza o scarsità degli elementi ci sono ripercussioni sulla salute. Si credeva che

l’eccesso o la carenza degli umori portasse all’insorgere di malattie. La bile gialla, ad

esempio, era associata a malattie calde come la febbre o disturbi epatici, la bile nera

provocava problemi alla milza, la flegma poteva portare a raffreddore o influenza e il

sangue a temperature del corpo elevate ed arrossamenti.

Successivamente nel secondo secolo d.C., la teoria filosofica di Ippocrate fu

perfezionata da Claudio Galeno (129 d.C.), medico e filosofo romano. Nel suo saggio

Le facoltà dell’anima seguono i temperamenti del corpo (Garofalo, Vegetti 1978) spiega

come la teoria degli umori possa essere affiancata non solo alla medicina e alla filosofia,

ma anch