Journal article
COMING OF AGE ON STAGE: JONSON'S EPICOENE AND THE POLITICS OF CHILDHOOD IN EARLY STUART ENGLAND
ELH, Vol.79(1), pp.135-160
04/01/2012
DOI: 10.1353/elh.2012.0001
Abstract
"7 James draws here on the familiar model of mimetic childhood education to argue that the role of Parliamentarians was not to speak their own desires but to learn to reflect and internalize his own-an attitude that shows why careful historians generally speak of "assent" rather than "consent" in Jacobean england.8 James's warning that Parliament must not "abuse" his glass refers not only to the proverbial idea that children learn by mirroring but that, as pre-rational creatures, they are apt to play with (and break) mirrors as they attempt to touch or talk to the images reflected there.9 such references were surely not lost on members of Parliament-which not incidentally included some actual children, under the age of consent, who served as a constant reminder that the representative body's role was as much symbolic as authoritative.10 but far from passively accepting the model of childlike subservience that James offered they could also invert it to discuss resistance in terms of growing up and leaving childish things behind: "if we should retorne into our contry with nothing for the good of our comon wealth," argued the member for arundel, John Tey, "they would say that [we have] bene all this while like children in ketching butterflies.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- COMING OF AGE ON STAGE: JONSON'S EPICOENE AND THE POLITICS OF CHILDHOOD IN EARLY STUART ENGLAND
- Creators
- Blaine Greteman
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- ELH, Vol.79(1), pp.135-160
- Publisher
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- DOI
- 10.1353/elh.2012.0001
- ISSN
- 0013-8304
- eISSN
- 1080-6547
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 04/01/2012
- Academic Unit
- English; University College Courses
- Record Identifier
- 9984397932602771
Metrics
7 Record Views