Transformation and Bliss: Between Personal Realities of Character and Readership in Frames and The Taming Of The/A Shrew
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2014
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Haverford College. Department of English
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Thesis
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
Roland Barthes introduced two idiosyncratic terms to criticism: pleasure, and bliss. Pleasure is the feeling of connection with or caused by a text; bliss, disconnection with or caused by the same. While most texts work primarily in pleasure, often the most groundbreaking work with the most staying power operates in as much bliss. In my thesis I demonstrate the often-unstudied nature of frame narratives, and demonstrate how, despite somewhat going against every instinct of pleasure, frame narratives can invoke powerful and valuable senses of bliss. Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew is a perfect example to root my work in, because critical and artistic responses to its frame narrative perfectly demonstrate bliss: critics and artists appropriating, abolishing, altering, and otherwise refusing to accept the frame (controversially considered "unfinished" by many) in the form in which it is presented. Ideas of what the frame and its central character Christopher Sly are representing thematically tend to rule to conversation, a conversation steeped in disconnection and the attempts to reconnect-–exactly what bliss causes.