TY - JOUR
T1 - Theaters of Solitary Selves
AU - Salih, Sarah
N1 - Funding Information:
Many thanks to Cary Howie for his perceptive and constructive comments on this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York.
PY - 2023/5/1
Y1 - 2023/5/1
N2 - The psychomachic model of the self as an unstable coalition of miscellaneous entities enables both detailed psychological analysis and intersubjectivity. It is a scalable form that may map an individual, a household, a city, or the world, thus permitting mutual indwelling. It is an implicitly dramatic form: a devotional text such as Sawles Warde has the potential to become a closet drama if read aloud, and it is possible that such devotional texts influenced the otherwise obscure early history of the psychomachic morality play. Psychomachic drama such as The Castle of Perseverance replicated the structure of anchoritic enclosure, inviting its audience to participate in its staging of an expanded self. The fifteenth-century poets John Lydgate and Thomas Hoccleve use the psychomachic form for self-analysis. Lydgate’s autobiographical Testament replicates the form of his mummings to account and repent for his past. Hoccleve, however, finds that self-analysis only produces further instability and that he needs social engagement with others in order to recover his self.
AB - The psychomachic model of the self as an unstable coalition of miscellaneous entities enables both detailed psychological analysis and intersubjectivity. It is a scalable form that may map an individual, a household, a city, or the world, thus permitting mutual indwelling. It is an implicitly dramatic form: a devotional text such as Sawles Warde has the potential to become a closet drama if read aloud, and it is possible that such devotional texts influenced the otherwise obscure early history of the psychomachic morality play. Psychomachic drama such as The Castle of Perseverance replicated the structure of anchoritic enclosure, inviting its audience to participate in its staging of an expanded self. The fifteenth-century poets John Lydgate and Thomas Hoccleve use the psychomachic form for self-analysis. Lydgate’s autobiographical Testament replicates the form of his mummings to account and repent for his past. Hoccleve, however, finds that self-analysis only produces further instability and that he needs social engagement with others in order to recover his self.
KW - Sawles Warde
KW - Castle of Perseverance
KW - Thomas Hoccleve
KW - John Lydgate
KW - psychomachia
UR - https://read.dukeupress.edu/romanic-review/issue/114/1
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85162848588&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1215/00358118-10357387
DO - 10.1215/00358118-10357387
M3 - Article
SN - 0035-8118
VL - 114
SP - 141
EP - 160
JO - ROMANIC REVIEW
JF - ROMANIC REVIEW
IS - 1
ER -