The Lacanian Discourse of the Other: Oaths and Perjuries in Shakespeare's Love's Labor's Lost and Measure for Measure

• Main Authors: Ming-hong Lin, 林明弘
• Other Authors: Hsiang-chun Chu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/81883774441219628170

碩士 === 國立彰化師範大學 === 英語學系 === 98 === The Lacanian Discourse of the Other: Oaths and Perjuries in Shakespeare's Love's Labor's Lost and Measure for Measure Abstract The study adopts the Lacanian discourse of the Other to interpret Shakespeare's Love's Labor's Lost and Measure for Measure. I intend to explore that the uses of oaths and perjuries as motifs are the representation of subjectivity of characters. The thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter One begins with an introduction to the multi-faceted discussion of oaths and their background in early modern England. The following part surveys the literary criticism of Love's Labor's Lost and Measure for Measure. The last part of the chapter is the organization of the thesis. The second chapter illustrates that the discourse of the Other Lacan propounds psychoanalytically is central to subjectivity. Lacan’s epistemology will be briefly summarized first. Section Two illuminates the formation of human ego in the mirror stage and other related terms. The following section illustrates that the symbolic father during the Oedipal stage influences subject-to-be and that speaking subjects must evoke the Name-of-the-Father to enter into the symbolic order and identify themselves. Moreover, when subjects are represented by signifiers, they as subjects of the unconscious become alienated in them and separated in terms of desire. The last section discusses how split subjects, invoking objet a, identify their desiring beings by traversing their own fantasy. The third chapter anatomizes that the masculine swearers in Love's Labor's Lost evoke the Name-of-the-Father in the symbolic order of Navarre in order to identify themselves. Yet the men remain imaginarily and symbolically alienated from their knowledge since they refuse lack and desire within the unconscious. They oscillate between self and the Other, and identify their desiring beings by traversing their fantasy. Chapter Four analyzes that Vincentio, Angelo, and Isabella in Measure for Measure evoke the Name-of-the-Father to identify their meanings in the symbolic order of Vienna. Vincentio and Angelo who distance themselves from their knowledge are lacking beings and repress their desire in the unconscious. Angelo vacillates between self and the Other in terms of desire. They attempt to anchor their subjectivity by traversing their fantasy. Finally, the study, in light of Lacan’s discourse of the Other, concludes that Shakespearean uses of oaths and perjuries as motifs are the representation of subjectivity for characters.