Bodies and becomings: human and animal encounters in early modern English literature

In this thesis I undertake a poststructuralist study of human and animal relations in early modern English literature. I argue that the “type” of human we understand ourselves to be is directly related to the “type” of animal we encounter. Specifically, “bounded” and “essentialist” conceptions of the human depend on notions of animals as “territorialised,” “passive” “objects.” Instead of reinforcing the idea of “human being,” I attend to the “affective” materiality and mobility of human and animal bodies to suggest kinds of “human becomings.” I pursue this aim by using the “affective” philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. I use three different “affective” approaches to bodies—“cartographic,” “meaty,” and “machinic”—to explore representations of human and animal bodies within the early modern contexts of bear-baiting, hunting, and music-making. In Chapter 1, I consider representations of bear-baiting by John Stow and Edmond Howes, William Shakespeare, Robert Laneham, and Thomas Nashe. In these representations bears move from “objects” of the spectators’ gaze, to “actants,” which like the Heideggerian “thing,” exert their efficacy and autonomy through non-cooperation. As “actants,” the animals in these examples emit affects which, potentially, draw spectators into an experience of “becoming-dog.” In Chapter 2, representations of the stag hunt by George Gascoigne, William Shakespeare, and Margaret Cavendish suggest somatic continuity between humans and animals. I argue that the shared carnality between humans and stags in these texts creates an affective “zone of proximity,” which Deleuze labels “meat.” “Meat” allows us to read moments of “deterritorialisation” in which “affects,” produced both voluntarily and involuntarily, disrupt categorical distinctions between humans and stags. The categories of “human” and “animal” emerge, in this chapter, as contingent rather than essential. In Chapter 3, I challenge ideas of animal, and indeed material, passivity through a “vital materialist” reading of acts of music-making in poems by Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare. In this chapter, “affects” are machinic—that is, connective—flows or vibrations of matter, which Deleuze and Guattari label “non-organic” or “non-localised” desire. Desire creates connections between not only humans and animals, but also organic and inorganic matter, suggesting an ontology of “human becomings.”Thesis (M.Phil.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2016