The face of a villain : storying white violence through miniatures, mirrors, and the stage in The tragedy of Hamlet
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: English Language and Literatures, Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Lopez, Camilla
issued: 2024-04-12T23:24:05Z
issued: 2024
related degree: Master of Arts - MA
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: This thesis interrogates the “storying” of white violence that occurs through Shakespearean tragedy. A term introduced by Gina Starbanket and Dallas Hunt to describe the ways in which “narratives, or spoken and written accounts, come alive and function as important political tools” (Storying Violence 23-24), the storying of white violence carries significant implications for how we conceive of both criminality and whiteness today. I offer early modern drama, and Shakespearean tragedy in particular, as a critical piece in the storying of white violence that continues to render whiteness invisible and illegible in our contemporary moment. This thesis focuses on Shakespeare’s storying of violence through The Tragedy of Hamlet. I contend that the play engages in a construction of whiteness that is crucially reliant on the intersection of visual and verbal representation, what I describe here as a visual epistemology mediated by language. Importantly, Hamlet registers not only the storying of white violence but also its disruption, moments of visual crisis and incoherence in the overarching narrative of white supremacy. Such moments of disruption, I argue, occur through the presence of miniatures, mirrors, and theatrical representation in the play. Analyzing these modes of representation alongside a historicized discussion of early modern visual culture, I show how Hamlet puts forward an understanding of criminal whiteness as deviant, the distorted reflection of whiteness that is, at the same time, assumed to be—and, indeed, set down as—the fundamental nature of Black bodies and being.
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/87796
note: THE FACE OF A VILLAIN: STORYING WHITE VIOLENCE THROUGH MINIATURES, MIRRORS, AND THE STAGE IN THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET by Camilla Lopez B.A. Honours, McGill University, 2020 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in The Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April 2024 © Camilla Lopez, 2024 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled: The Face of a Villain: Storying White Violence through Miniatures, Mirrors, and the Stage in The Tragedy of Hamlet submitted by Camilla Lopez in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English Examining Committee: Dennis Austin Britton, Associate Professor, English Language and Literatures, UBC Supervisor Patricia Badir, Professor and Department Head, English Language and Literatures, UBC Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract This thesis interrogates the “storying” of white violence that occurs through Shakespearean tragedy. A term introduced by Gina Starbanket and Dallas Hunt to describe the ways in which “narratives, or spoken and written accounts, come alive and function as important political tools” (Storying Violence 23-24), the storying of white violence carries significant implications for how we conceive of both criminality and whiteness today. I offer early modern drama, and Shakespearean tragedy in particular, as a critical piece in the storying of white violence that continues to render whiteness invisible and illegible in our contemporary moment. This thesis focuses on Shakespeare’s storying of violence through The Tragedy of Hamlet. I contend that the play engages in a construction of whiteness that is crucially reliant on the intersection of visual and verbal representation, what I describe here as a visual epistemology mediated by language. Importantly, Ha…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2024-05
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0441330
language: eng
degree discipline: English
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
contributor: Britton, Dennis Austin
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/87796