Between men and between women: homosocial bonds in Shakespeare's, Heywood's, and Middleton's Lucretia narratives

摘要

Considerable research focuses on the ways in which Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucreceud(1594) depicts the destructive nature of emulative male homosocial bonds and challengesudthe early modern English attitude that male-male friendship is virtuous and idyllic. Asudeffectively as Shakespeare’s poem makes this critique, Thomas Heywood’s The Rape ofudLucrece (1607) and Thomas Middleton’s The Ghost of Lucrece (1627) provide strongerudparodies of ideal same-sex friendship and open up new possibilities for exploring howudthese competitive relationships harm women and how women themselves construct samesexudrelations. This thesis builds upon existing scholarship on homosociality inudShakespeare’s poem and draw attention to the significant contribution that Heywood’sudand Middleton’s lesser-known texts make to studies of early modern homosocial bonds.udThis project reveals how, in the three Lucretia narratives, both men and women areudinvolved in rivalrous same-sex friendships, however; because of the female characters’udcommon need to protect themselves from patriarchal threats, the bonds between womenudare notably stronger than the bonds between men.