Nothing of Woman: The Feminine Void of Matter in Shakespeare
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18485/bells.2014.6.6Keywords:
Renaissance Neoplatonism, matter, the maternal, nothing, OAbstract
Studying the metaphysics of Renaissance Neoplatonism might arguably help throw into sharper relief some of the more haunting figures in Shakespeare’s work. Referring to the Neoplatonic concept of matter, this paper attempts to expand and further illuminate the figure that Philippa Berry has termed “Shakespeare’s tragic O’s” (2002) by showing it to connect multiple images of matter as the maternal/infernal void. In Shakespeare’s darker plays, the “O” as feminine prime matter can figure as a locus for the encounter with primordial matter, the womb/tomb that (en)matters and thus kills, “hell” and “nothing” that can indicate both unformed matter and the vaginal orifice, and the nothing – the 0 – out of which everything is made.
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