The moral dimension of disguise and role-playing in Ben Jonson’s volpone, the alchemist and the silent woman

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2015

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Tekin, Çağla

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This thesis studies the plays Volpone, The Alchemist and The Silent Woman in order to show that through his characters who adopt multiple identities, Ben Jonson aimed to show his audience that disguise and role-playing are morally wrong. As a classicist, Jonson was influenced by Stoicism (mainly by Seneca). Stoicism was a philosophy that advocated being harmonious with nature and consistent in identity, which were seen as the ultimate paths to virtue. Therefore, Jonson, following Stoic’s analogy of life as a stage, thought that the ideal man is the person who remaines loyal to his role, in other words his identity, from beginning to end. Jonson, as a satirist who finds every act that threatens self-integrity immoral, aims to awaken his audience to social and moral realities of his time by reflecting his time on stage; and by punishing his disguisers and role-players, who take advantage of other characters, he aims at transmitting his moral message.

Subject Keywords

English literatüre, Disguise in literature., Stoics in literature.

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http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12619515/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/25172

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Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats

Ç. Tekin, “The moral dimension of disguise and role-playing in Ben Jonson’s volpone, the alchemist and the silent woman,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2015.