Rewriting the 'respublica': The politics of literary figuration in More's ''Utopia'', Shakespeare's ''Pericles'', and Milton's ''Areopagitica''

An examination of the use of literary figuration to promote social criticism and to project the possibility of political reform in three English Renaissance texts. Although the approach taken has much in common with current "new historicist" methodologies, it does not share their dominant assumption: that literary works on this period "re-present" the figurative logic that informed the royal point of view on the social and political order, and so "collaborate" in the imposition and maintenance of monarchical "power." Rather the dissertation argues that each of the texts examined does not merely "re-present," but in effect rewrites the figurative logic involved in the reproduction of monarchical power into a broader context of social representation and political struggle: each aims to rewrite the "public entity"--the respublica--itself into a more strategically resistant political character. The readings begin with the deciphering of a rhetorical enigma secreted into each text: Hythlodaeus' denunciation of English depopulating enclosure in Utopia; Antiochus' incest riddle in Pericles; an oratorical passion all out of proportion with the issue ostensibly at stake in Areopagitica. Once deciphered, these enigmatic points of rhetorical departure are found--specifically through each author's deployment of a metaphorics of error, voyaging, and colonial "planting"--to open out onto a figurative and political trajectory of great topical depth and transhistorical scope.