RECENT
“‘Seeds and Roots’: Hiddenness and Hendiadys,” in Early Modern Studies Journal 9 (2024): 1-22.
Abstract: In this essay, I investigate a particularly early modern example of hendiadys: “the seeds and roots of…,” a phrase that appears in Shakespeare’s Pericles and found in multiple texts of the period. I suggest that the spatially proximate positioning of both the root and the germinating seed below or near the base of a vegetal body, essentially hidden from human vision, gave rise to this now obscure rhetorical expression that blended these two vegetal parts into one as a compounded metaphor for origin. Drawing upon new materialist frameworks, particularly the concepts of “veering ecology” and “storied matter,” I argue that this hendiadysical expression contains a material trace of the morphological identity of plant life, in the relation of parts to the whole, in addition to its figurative and seemingly overdetermined rhetorical functioning.
“Intertextual Outlawry: Robin Hood and Race in We Need to Talk About Kevin,” in Adaptation 16.3 (2023): 368-389.
Abstract: This article investigates the presence of Robin Hood as a key figure in Lionel Shriver’s novel We Need to Talk About Kevin and its film adaptation, directed by Lynne Ramsay. I argue that the film emphasizes Kevin’s ‘whiteness’ in the way that it adapts the Robin Hood material from Shriver’s novel, embellishing his role in the story and complicating his affiliation with the teenage killer by tapping into Robin Hood’s status in popular visual culture; in so doing, the film critiques America’s ‘copycat’ appropriation of a similar strategy used by earlier nationalist writers in Britain. In the scene that depicts a Robin Hood children’s book, Ramsay superimposes multiple Robin Hood texts into one, polyphonically performing the Bakhtinian concept of dialogism. Therefore, despite the fact that Kevin appropriates Robin Hood for his own evil ends, Ramsay dialogically inserts multiple voicings from the Robin Hood tradition to speak against a hegemonic backdrop of white masculinity (mis)informed by racist discourses affirming Anglo-Saxonist ideas of white heritage.
“‘Between the Red Rose and the White’: Staging Vegetal Materiality in the First Tetralogy,” in Shakespeare 19.2 (2023): 180-202.
Focusing on 1 and 3 Henry VI, this essay analyzes the ‘vegetal’ performances of Shakespeare’s first history tetralogy, informed by insights about the more-than-human world from the fields of new materialism and critical plant studies. Specifically, I argue that the roses the original performers wore onstage should be viewed as vegetal co-stars in Shakespeare’s dramatisation of the wars that bear their name. In close proximity to the players who wore them and mobilised them, the roses are at once highly objectified symbols and agential co-participants in the meaning-making of the plays constructed by both the players and the audience during performances. These roses were plant-agents among Plantagenets, exerting their own volitions and idiosyncrasies onstage, amidst the actors who wore them on their person. Thus, this essay intervenes in conversations about the agency of objects such as props and costumes on the Elizabethan stage, asserting a special place for objects that really should be viewed as subjects, this plant material representing the staged appearances of once living biological entities whose bodily idiosyncrasies could assert a material presence and even resistance to the humans with whom they shared the theatrical space.
“The Botanical Revisions of 3 Henry VI,” in Shakespeare’s Botanical Imagination, ed. Susan Staub (University of Amsterdam Press, 2023).
Abstract: This analysis investigates the differences in botanical representation between the version of 3 Henry VI printed in the1623 First Folio and the earliest printed version of the play, the 1595 octavo The True Tragedy. This comparison of textual variants demonstrates that the botanical stylings of the folio text are considerably more extensive and elaborate than those of the octavo. These changes range from added passages to single-word variants, suggesting a comprehensive program of revision aimed toward expanding the botanical register of the play. Botanical revisions to the text also point toward an attempt at harmonizing the play with others in the first history tetralogy, giving it a more serial and connected character when grouped among other history plays in the First Folio.
“The Matter of the Greenwood in the More-Than-Human-World,” in the Bulletin of the International Association for Robin Hood Studies 4.1 (2022): 41-56.
Abstract: This article brings posthumanist and new materialist perspectives to bear on the enmeshment of “the human” with and among the materialities of the greenwood in early Robin Hood ballads, focusing on Robin Hood and the Monk. The article suggests that medieval outlaw tales offer ecocriticism a site within medieval literature that not only challenges and deconstructs prevailing notions of human exceptionalism and anthropocentrism, but also portrays the medieval forest as a storied place, what Wendy Wheeler calls a “meaning-bearing field of agency,” imbued with interacting stories of both animate and inanimate life, such as the deer hunted by Robin and his outlaws, and also less obvious beings, such as the famous Trysting Tree.
“Early Modern Fishing Practices and Seafood Culture in Robin Hood’s Fishing,” in Food and Feast in Premodern Outlaw Tales (Routledge, 2021), eds. Melissa Ridley Elmes and Kristin Bovaird-Abbo.
Abstract: Among early Robin Hood stories, one in particular stands out as being rather “out of place.” The seventeenth century ballad Robin Hood’s Fishing principally takes place not in the merry greenwood but at sea, and it features our outlaw hero as either an unlucky or an incompetent fisherman. The oddity or incongruity of this scenario in comparison with more orthodox portrayals of the legend, however, affords us the unique perspective of seeing the outlaw’s interaction with an early modern fishing community, that of Scarborough in Yorkshire. Robin Hood’s Fishing, although it has been shunned by some scholars as being too silly or bizarre, ultimately adapts and reinforces many established conventions and characteristics of the Robin Hood tradition, including its liminal qualities; in this tale, Robin sails along the border of a mythic past and a mercantile future, as well as attempting a trade that stands somewhere ambiguously between hunting and agriculture. In this essay, I compare this ballad with contemporaneous pamphlets that advocated for increased national fishing efforts and argue that although Robin Hood’s opening remarks in the ballad echo the mercantilist rhetoric of the pamphlets, the events that transpire during Robin’s tenure on board the fishing ship suggest that Robin Hood’s Fishing actually critiques this nationalist rhetoric by representing Robin as a clumsy counterpoint to the competence of the Yorkshire fishers, thus affirming the value of local industries and economies.
“Ariel’s Anguish: Doing (Arboreal) Time in The Tempest,” in ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment) 28.4 (2021), 1481-1506.
Abstract: Before performing magical acts for Prospero, tricksy sprite Ariel spent twelve years confined within a “cloven pine” tree, confined there by the witch Sycorax. Though Ariel’s experience is a painful one, his lengthy tormented existence there invites ecological speculation about the nature of this arboreal enmeshment. Would Ariel’s modes of experiencing time begin to conform to that of the tree? The play-text suggests otherwise, as Ariel does not cease groaning for the duration of his imprisonment, more attuned to human senses of time, measured moment by moment, than to the imperceptible growth of the vegetal, synced to natural rhythms. I argue that contemplation of Ariel’s inability to mesh with this temporality, while in close spatial proximity to the tree, offers a way of thinking before and after the Anthropocene’s “time of the human,” in our own times of ecological uncertainty and tenuous relations with the verdant world.
FORTHCOMING
“Plant Bodies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” in Midsummer Night’s Dream: The State of Play, ed. Rebecca Bushnell (Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare – The State of Play Series).
“‘Nature’ in British Literature: Experiential Learning through Community Gardening,” forthcoming in Experiential Learning, ed. Sarah Shelton (Mavs Open Press).
Jason C. Hogue, Ph.D. 