“TRUE IMAGE PICTUR’D”: METAPHOR, EPISTEMOLOGY, AND SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS【翻译】

Kellogg, Amanda O. “True Image Pictur’d”: Metaphor, Epistemology, and Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Doctor of Philosophy (English), May 2014, 187 pp., references, 152 titles.
In this dissertation, I examine the influence of Pyrrhonist skepticism over Shakespeare’s sonnets. Unlike academic skepticism, which begins from a position of doubt, Pyrrhonist skepticism encourages an embrace of multiple perspectives that, according to Sextus Empiricus, leads first to a suspension of judgment and ultimately to a state of tranquility. The Pyrrhonian inflection of Shakespeare’s sonnets accounts for the pleasure and uncertainty they cultivate in readers. By offering readers multiple perspectives on a given issue, such as love or infidelity, Shakespeare’s sonnets demonstrate the instability of information, suggesting that such instability can be a source for pleasure. One essential tool for the uncertainty in the sonnets, I argue, is the figurative language they draw from a variety of fields and discourses. When these metaphors contradict one another, creating fragmented images in the minds of readers, they generate a unique aesthetic experience, which creates meaning that transcends the significance of any of the individual metaphors.
In the first two chapters, I identify important contexts for Shakespeare’s sensitivity to the pliability of figurative language: Reformation-era religious tracts and pamphleteers’ debates about the value and function of the theater. In Chapter 3, I examine Shakespeare’s response to the Petrarchan tradition, arguing that he diverges from the sonneteers, who often use figurative language in an attempt to access and communicate stable truths. Shakespeare creates epistemological instability in sonnets both to the young man and to the dark lady, and, as I argue in Chapter 4, this similarity offers readers an opportunity to think beyond traditional divisions between the two sonnet subsequences.
Copyright 2014 by
Amanda O. Kellogg
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My research and writing have benefitted tremendously from the generosity and wisdom of my dissertation committee. I have used Kevin Curran’s scholarship and pedagogy as models for my own academic and professional work. The high standards he sets for himself and his students challenge me to think deeply about my methodology. Alex Pettit has also been integral to my professional development. In particular, I will seek to emulate his unflagging work ethic and his considerate approach to the work of other scholars. Most of all, I am indebted to my dissertation director, Jacqueline Vanhoutte, a brilliant teacher and scholar, whose poise, wit, and discernment show young graduate students that feminist scholarship is necessary and important in early modern literature. For her willingness to read every essay, abstract, and conference paper I have written over the last seven years, and for her energetic, insightful approach to studying literature, I will always be grateful. I hope we will watch many more plays together.
My dissertation writing group has also devoted much time and consideration to this project. Thank you, Hella Bloom Cohen and Lindsay Emory Moore, for your help and for your friendship.
Finally, I want to thank my family for their love and encouragement. Thank you to my husband, David, who always expresses confidence in me and who has supported me unwaveringly through my studies; to my sister, Ashton, with her sympathetic disposition and refreshingly optimistic outlook; and to my mother and father, who taught me to be a good listener, which is, I now recognize, the most important characteristic of a scholar.
This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, Chesley Franklin McPhatter, Jr.: “Think how I loved your Music, / Not for itself alone, / But for the hands that played it / The mind that felt its tone.”
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................. iii
Chapters
1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................1
2. METAPHOR WARS.............................................................................................22
3. THE POET “NEVER LIETH” ..............................................................................68
4. PYRRHONIST PETRARCHANISM..................................................................113
5. MASK OF BLACKNESS ...................................................................................148
6. CONCLUSION....................................................................................................186
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................189

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