Abstract
Combining Silvan Tomkins’ theories about shame’s relation to the self and Brian Massumi’s influential concept of the “autonomy of affect,” this chapter reads the character of Beatrice in Percy Shelley’s The Cenci as a study in self-construction. Beatrice struggles to articulate the fact that she has been raped; this leads to critical uncertainty about the reliability of her disclosures. While the aporia of the rape is normally read as a critique of social hegemony, Roberts demonstrates how Shelley uses reticence to enable Beatrice to manipulate the “autonomy” of shame and style herself as a wronged martyr. Providing an original perspective on how affects are textually expressive, Roberts argues that Beatrice’s manipulation of multiple levels of textual signification parallels how affect simultaneously accesses various aspects of consciousness.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The idea of a phenomenological shame that marks out the space where the “I” is constructed or deconstructed by discourse is based on Giorgio Agamben’s writing on shame (2002) in Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive (New York: Zone Books).
References
Agamben, Giorgio. 2002. Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. New York: Zone Books.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Felski, Rita. 2015. The Limits of Critique. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. 2012. Atmosphere, Mood, Stimmung: On a Hidden Potential of Literature. Trans. Erik Butler. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Levinas, Emmanuel. 2003. On Escape. Trans. Bettina Bergo. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Leys, Ruth. 2011. The Turn to Affect: A Critique. Critical Inquiry 37 (3): 434–472.
Massumi, Brian. 1995. The Autonomy of Affect. Cultural Critique 31: 83–109.
Ricoeur, Paul. 1976. Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Texas: The Texas Christian University Press.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 2003. Shame, Theatricality, and Queer Performativity: Henry James’s The Art of the Novel. In Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity, ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, 35–65. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, and Adam Frank. 1995. Shame in the Cybernetic Fold: Reading Silvan Tomkins. In Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader, ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adam Frank, 1–29. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Shelley, Percy. 2000 [1819]. The Cenci. In The Poems of Shelley, Longman Annotated English Poets Series, ed. Kelvin Everest and G.M. Matthews, vol. 2, 737–863. London: Longman.
———. 2000 [1819]. Preface to The Cenci. In The Poems of Shelley, Longman Annotated English Poets Series, ed. Kelvin Everest and G.M. Matthews, vol. 2, 725–726. London: Longman.
Tomkins, Silvan. 1995a. Shame–Humiliation and Contempt–Disgust. In Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader, ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adam Frank, 133–178. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
———. 1995b. Script Theory and Nuclear Scripts. In Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader, ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adam Frank, 179–196. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Roberts, M. (2019). Shame and Its Affects: The Form–Content Implosion of Shelley’s The Cenci. In: Ahern, S. (eds) Affect Theory and Literary Critical Practice. Palgrave Studies in Affect Theory and Literary Criticism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97268-8_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97268-8_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-97267-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-97268-8
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)