Plaintive Words: Legal and Literary Complaints, 1550-1625

哀怨的话语：法律和文学的抱怨，1550-1625

• 批准号: 2877040
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2877040
• 关键词: Plaintive; Words; Legal; Literary; Complaints; Plaintive; Words; Legal; Literary; Complaints

The literature of complaint is seeing a resurgent critical interest. Recent scholarship has renewed its analytic purchase as a crucial literary mode of the English Renaissance, revealing the necessary work of re-evaluating its place in English literary history (Ross and Smith, 2020). These studies have yielded vital insights into complaint as a pervasive means for expressions of powerlessness or protest in response to social change, and thus as an essential 'mode for the formation of the early modern political subject' (Ross, O'Callaghan, Smith, 2018). More recent studies have also challenged canonical accounts of this female-voiced literary tradition as predominantly male-authored, paying fresh attention to early modern women's complaints as occasions for critical debates on questions of authorship and voice; translation and Classical imitation; reception and textual transmission; as well as prompting revisionist enquiries into the boundaries of genre itself (Reid, 2020; Clarke, 2020; Wiseman, 2020; Enterline, 2020). This project insists, however, that a crucial element of this literary mode has still been left unstudied-that is, its direct engagement with changes in the legal culture and language of complaint. It examines how complaint-as a pervasive literary mode of the English Renaissance for the expression of erotic, religious, or political lamentation-diverged from its medieval and classical precedents to flourish as a legally inflected rhetorical mode. Specifically, it suggests that the frequently female-voiced tradition of literary complaint developed in response to contemporary changes in English law that transformed the language and culture of women's public plaints (Chaytor, 1995; Baines, 1998; Walker, 2003; Gowing, 2003). Spanning from 1550 to 1625, this thesis apprehends a transitional period in English legal and literary history, marked by the conceptual emergence of rape as an explicitly sexual crime against a person, which supplanted the medieval model of rape as a homosocial property crime. This transition in the legal status of women, from property to plaintiffs, gave rise to new narrative formations and plaintive scripts which, this project suggests, transformed the Renaissance tradition of literary complaint.This research will thus contribute to this flourishing critical field by firstly carving out a different model of interpretation for this crucial literary mode that recontextualizes the literature of complaint within its proper legal historical context. It reframes the Renaissance complaint tradition by positioning it alongside contemporary archival sources, such as legal treatises, manuals, and dictionaries, as well as church court records of women's plaintive testimonies and depositions. This project will subsequently trace the complaint tradition's "strategies of imitative disjuncture" from its premodern precedents (Lyne, 2001). Having reframed the complaint tradition within its proper legal and historical context, this project will conduct a rhetorical analysis of this shifting literary mode and enquire how the ancient rhetorical tradition, as institutionalised in humanist curricula of Renaissance schoolrooms, influenced literary perceptions of credible complaints, thus building on the scholarship of Lynn Enterline (2012), Kathy Eden (2017), and Lorna Hutson (1999; 2018). Finally, this project considers complaint's intertextuality, with particular attention to the translation and literary adaptation of classical and Biblical tales with the aim of contributing to ongoing research about the epistemological problems of representing sexual knowledge (Scozzaro, 2021; Keleher, 2022; Holmes, forthcoming).

抱怨的文献是看到了复兴的批判利益。最近的奖学金已将其分析购买恢复为英国文艺复兴时期至关重要的文学模式，揭示了重新评估其在英语文学史上的地位的必要工作（Ross and Smith，2020年）。这些研究使人们对抱怨的重要见解是一种对社会变革的无能为力或抗议的普遍手段，因此是一种基本的“形成早期现代政治主题的模式”（Ross，O'Callaghan，Smith，Smith，2018）。最近的研究还挑战了对这种女性发声的文学传统的规范记载，主要是男性作者，对早期现代女性的抱怨引起了新的关注，这是关于作者身份和声音问题的关键辩论的机会。翻译和古典模仿；接收和文字传输；除了促使修正主义询问流派本身的界限（Reid，2020； Clarke，2020； Wiseman，2020； Enterline，2020）。但是，该项目坚持认为，这种文学模式的关键要素仍未得到研究，即它直接与法律文化和投诉语言的变化有关。它探讨了对英国文艺复兴时期的普遍文学模式的抱怨，以表达与中世纪和古典的先例，以表达色情，宗教或政治哀叹，以繁荣发展，作为一种法律上易于体现的言辞模式。具体来说，它表明，经常被女性发声的文学抱怨传统是针对当代法律的当代变化改变了妇女公共原告的语言和文化的（Chaytor，1995; Baines，1998; Walker，2003; Gowing，2003年）。跨越1550年至1625年，本文理解了英国法律和文学史上的过渡时期，其特征是强奸的概念出现是针对一个人的明确性犯罪，这取代了中世纪的强奸模式作为同性恋财产犯罪。从财产到原告的妇女法律地位的这种过渡产生了新的叙事形式和朴素的脚本，该项目建议，这改变了文学投诉的文艺复兴传统。因此，这项研究将通过首先为这种重要的文学模式而构成不同的文学历史上的文学范围，从而为这一蓬勃发展的关键领域做出了贡献。它通过将其定位在当代档案资源（例如法律论文，手册和词典）以及教会法院记录妇女的熟悉证词和证词的记录中，将文艺复兴投诉传统定位在文艺复兴投诉的传统中。该项目随后将从其前现代的先例中追踪投诉传统的“模仿析取策略”（Lyne，2001）。 Having reframed the complaint tradition within its proper legal and historical context, this project will conduct a rhetorical analysis of this shifting literary mode and enquire how the ancient rhetorical tradition, as institutionalised in humanist curricula of Renaissance schoolrooms, influenced literary perceptions of credible complaints, thus building on the scholarship of Lynn Enterline (2012), Kathy Eden (2017), and Lorna Hutson (1999; 2018）。最后，该项目考虑了抱怨的互文性，特别关注古典和圣经故事的翻译和文学适应，目的是为代表性知识的认识论问题进行持续的研究（Scozzaro，2021; Keleher，2022; Holmes; Holmes，即将出版）。