Abstract
Chapter Two extends the work of the previous chapter by offering a more focused critique of the rhetorical and ideological strategies by which aesthetic pleasure has been devalued in both Renaissance and contemporary humanism. The chapter engages in an intensive analysis of Shakespeare’s Richard II in order to reveal how the forceful abjection of vain pleasures, as personified in King Richard and his sodomitical counselors, animates the play’s ideological machinery. It demonstrates further that, as a play, Richard II is itself a manifestation of the forms of futile pleasure that the dramatic world within the play aims to scapegoat. It ends by turning to the remainder of the second tetralogy to trace the plays’ reconstitution of pleasure’s vanity in the form of Prince Hal so that it can be reformed as useful once the prince is redeemed and assumes the throne as Henry V. This reading of Shakespeare’s texts is framed by an argument against commonplace narratives about the legacy of deconstructive theory. Just as Shakespeare’s second tetralogy stages and reinforces the submission of pleasure to use and vanity to virtue, so have critics tended to redeem the forms of queer pleasure for which deconstruction has been routinely vilified.
Published Version
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