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Date of Award
9-2013
Access Type
Campus Access
Document type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
English
First Advisor
Arthur F. Kinney
Second Advisor
Joseph L. Black
Third Advisor
Anne Lake Prescott
Subject Categories
English Language and Literature | Linguistics | Philosophy
Abstract
This dissertation investigates Shakespeare as a thinker and views the stage as a place of linguistic and philosophical questioning. As Charles Schmitt and Quentin Skinner suggest in Renaissance Philosophy, "the Renaissance was one of intense philosophical activity" (1), and I suggest that Shakespeare's use of language, his tool of trade, engages with these contemporary philosophical debates. Language becomes for Shakespeare an epistemologic site of investigation: What is the nature of language? How does language both construct and challenge the understanding of what is known? Simultaneously, how does language contribute to the evolution of knowledge, and can language itself be one of the forms that knowledge takes? This dissertation explores the complex ways in which Shakespeare dramatizes on stage this profound early modern preoccupation on the nature of language.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/bhaj-6r35
Recommended Citation
Roche, Marie H, "Shakespearean Signifiers" (2013). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 553.
https://doi.org/10.7275/bhaj-6r35
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/553