"An Idiot of the Newest Cut": Disability and Social Mobility in Lyly's Mother Bombie.
In the comedy Mother Bombie (c. 1589), John Lyly presents a highly verbal conception of human wit as a key element of emergent capitalism, presents it as inconsistent with the inheritance framework underlying Elizabethan society, and yet tries to imagine society adapting to the rising importance of...
| Publicado en: | Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies Vol. 22; no. 4; pp. 1 - 24 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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University of Pennsylvania Press
Fall2022
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=180997973&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 180997973 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 15310485 DBLW jtl: Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies issn: 15310485 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Fall2022 vid: 22 iid: 4 pid: 4636 pub: University of Pennsylvania Press artinfo: ui: 180997973 ppf: 1 ppct: 23 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 708KB tig: atl: "An Idiot of the Newest Cut": Disability and Social Mobility in Lyly's Mother Bombie. aug: au: Bartlett, Bridget su: Human capital Symbolic capital Social disabilities Mothers Capitalism Social mobility sug: subj: Human capital Symbolic capital Social disabilities Mothers Capitalism Social mobility keyword: changelings class cognitive disability disability dysfluency early modern early modern drama Elizabethan drama John Lyly social mobility ab: In the comedy Mother Bombie (c. 1589), John Lyly presents a highly verbal conception of human wit as a key element of emergent capitalism, presents it as inconsistent with the inheritance framework underlying Elizabethan society, and yet tries to imagine society adapting to the rising importance of this human capital without completely sacrificing its longstanding model of socioeconomic stratification. Mother Bombie addresses the stress that non-heritable human capital (i.e. wit, for Lyly) was increasingly placing on a socioeconomic structure reliant on primogeniture, and then attempts to alleviate this stress. The play makes this latter move by reframing mental (dis)ability as the determining factor for class, rather than the reverse. By reconceptualizing wit as human capital rather than hereditary symbolic capital, Lyly shores up defined social categories by preserving wit as a classed attribute with which the societal ingroup can define itself against the witless outgroup of an "idiot" underclass. Instead of making the inarticulate foolish characters at the center of the action or their dysfluency completely disappear by the end of the play, Lyly has the play end with them becoming highly legible as dysfluent fools. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies is the property of University of Pennsylvania Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies holder: University of Pennsylvania Press dt: @attributes: year: 2022 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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