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    Exploring ‘Zelmaneship’: Developing Queer Inwardness from Sidney to Stage

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    Warner_ku_0099M_16480_DATA_1.pdf (1.130Mb)
    Issue Date
    2019-05-31
    Author
    Warner, Mikaela
    Publisher
    University of Kansas
    Format
    40 pages
    Type
    Thesis
    Degree Level
    M.A.
    Discipline
    English
    Rights
    Copyright held by the author.
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    Abstract
    Zelmane the Amazon, a central character in Philip Sidney’s epic romance The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (1590), has often been studied for her transgressive gender and sexuality. Zelmane’s first words in the New Arcadia direct readers to look within, “Transform’d in show, but more transform’d in mind” (Sidney 131). I argue that this substantial transformation is what Katherine Eisaman Maus calls “inwardness,” a word drawn from Sidney’s “In Defense of Poesy” in Inwardness and Theatre in the English Renaissance (1995). In “In Defense of Posey,” he writes how characters can exhibit both an “inward self, and ... [an] outward government” (50). Zelmane, conceptualized only as a disguise, would be the outward show of Pyrocles; Sidney, however, writes the Amazon with an inward self and individuates her from the Prince. Sidney writes Zelmane with independent pronouns, differentiated thoughts, and the ability to resist transforming back into Pyrocles. Because Zelmane’s demonstrated inwardness both separates her from Pyrocles and represents a shift across genders, Zelmane’s inwardness is queer. Dramatic interpretations of Sidney’s Arcadia, however, do not exhibit this same inwardness. John Day’s Isle of Gulls (1606) and James Shirley’s A Pastoral Called the Arcadia (1640) reduce Zelmane’s inwardness and portray her only as a cross-dressed disguise. Sidney’s Zelmane, as a distinct central character to a widely popular early modern text, reveals a possibility for queer inwardness unexamined by recent scholarship.
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/1808/30105
    Collections
    • English Dissertations and Theses [450]
    • Theses [3825]

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    KU Libraries
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    Lawrence, KS 66045
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    Contact KU ScholarWorks
    785-864-8983
    KU Libraries
    1425 Jayhawk Blvd
    Lawrence, KS 66045
    785-864-8983

    KU Libraries
    1425 Jayhawk Blvd
    Lawrence, KS 66045
    Image Credits
     

     

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