Self-fashioning,Anxiety And Freedom:On The Horn Trope In Shakespeare’s Plays

Shakespeare depicts,throughout 18 out of his 39 plays,men’s preoccupation with the metaphor of “horns on the forehead” in early modern England,which in effect alludes to the ubiquitous cuckoldry anxiety on both an individual and cultural level.As the title suggests,drawing on Stephen Greenblatt’s notion of self-fashioning,this thesis revolves around the construction of the self during the English Renaissance and delves into the individual and collective anxiety revealed by the horn trope in Shakespeare’s plays.Specifically,based on the synthesis of a close textual analysis and the socio-historical approach,this thesis explores the origin and evolution of the horn trope,along with the development of technologies of the self since classical antiquity,for a better grasp of men’s self-fashioning strategies and practices and the attendant horn anxiety in Shakespeare’s time.Besides,this thesis focuses on three types of male characters preoccupied with horn tropes:men who seek to render others horned,men who imagine themselves wearing horns and men who are keen on horn humor.In addition,to further clarify their failure in self-fashioning,this thesis takes men who can banish horn anxiety and female characters who make good use of horn jokes as a contrast,expounding on how they achieve a certain degree of self-identity and freedom in the same milieu.Minor historical mystery as the popularity of the horn trope in early modern England is,a study of this detail in Shakespearean drama actually points to a study of the darker side of the Renaissance,notably the issue of self-fashioning in this period of historic change.Despite the fact that classical philosophers had developed a fairly mature set of self-techniques,the revival of the classical tradition in England did not really continue it.Instead,with the rise of the Protestant ethic and capitalism,along with the prevalence of humanism,individual identity was increasingly shaped by a set of control mechanisms and was reduced to the product of diverse ideologies,thereby giving rise to such apprehensions as cuckoldry anxiety.By exploring the English Renaissance’s inheritance of and rebellion against classical antiquity in terms of self-construction and comparing the attitudes of Shakespeare’s characters to horn tropes,this thesis aims to reveal the plight of self-formation in early modern England and to suggest a possible way to freedom,with a view to shedding light on the construction of subjectivity for contemporary individuals.