“Aurea mediocritas” Deconstructed: Devouring the Social Body in The Bloody Banquet
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: This article examines Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s The Bloody Banquet (c. 1609) as a radical interrogation of transgression, abjection, and power dynamics in Jacobean drama. It argues that the play’s staging of taboo violations – tyranny, sexual desire, and cannibalism – reflects a broader crisis of order and meaning in early modern English culture. Through a close reading of key scenes – particularly the grotesque bloody banquet – this article traces how the central characters – the transgressive Queen Thetis and the tyrannical Armatrites – paradoxically embody dynamics of excess and restraint, subversion and containment. The play’s portrayal of the erosion of social, political, and ontological boundaries challenges the early modern ideal of moderation, exposing the fragility of the self and the body politic amidst the radical destabilisation of stereotyped categories of identity and difference.
Source: Università degli Studi di Urbino
Author: Continisio, Tommaso
Institution: University of Rome Tor Vergata
Language: English
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6904533267
FWCI:
Cites:
Cited by:
Related to: