Objects of Affection: Intimate Exchanges in Marlowe, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Wroth

Open Access
- Author:
- Eggers, Mckenzie Moran
- Graduate Program:
- English
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- August 06, 2020
- Committee Members:
- Garrett Sullivan, Jr., Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Garrett Sullivan, Jr., Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Patrick G Cheney, Committee Member
Marcy Lynne North, Committee Member
Tracy Leanne Rutler, Outside Member
Mark Stewart Morrisson, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- Early Modern
British
Literature
Objects
Intimacy
Marlowe
Shakespeare
Spenser
Wroth - Abstract:
- “Objects of Affection” explores how the people of early modern England imagined, believed, hoped, and feared the material objects they exchanged with those closest to them would strengthen, sever, or otherwise shape their intimate ties to one another. More specifically, this project considers what fictional representations of object-centered intimacy in Renaissance literature reveal about early modern authors’ and audiences’ attitudes toward and understandings of the objects that performed critical functions in their intimate lives. This dissertation investigates its central topic through the lens of literature because the fiction of a period uniquely illuminates how its authors and audiences perceive the world around them and what their greatest desires and anxieties about that world are. To highlight the significance of objects in early modern fictions of love, friendship, familial relations, and sexual desire, “Objects of Affection” brings together two fields that have rarely been in conversation in early modern literary scholarship: intimacy theory and materialism. By employing literary and historical analysis and intimacy and materialist theory, this dissertation demonstrates that Renaissance intimacy is linked not only to interior thoughts and desires (as it typically has been) but to the material objects that exist in the external world. In reevaluating our understandings of early modern intimacy, my analysis adds to the relatively sparse work on intimacy in the field of Renaissance literary criticism as well. Whereas scholarship on the family, courtship, marriage, sexuality, and friendship abounds, less has been done to theorize early modern intimacy itself. Ultimately, “Objects of Affection” offers a more comprehensive picture of Renaissance England’s intimate landscape than currently exists and suggests another lens—that of materiality—through which to (re)consider interpersonal closeness in early modern England.