Ernst Kantorowicz, Shakespeare, and the Humanities’ Two Bodies

Abstract

This commentary reflects on two very different revivals of Ernst Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology in the field of early modern studies, the first during the heyday of New Historicism and the second in the current post-New Historicist moment that is still defining itself. The first revival focused on the literal meaning of king’s two bodies, the second on its figurative and fictional nature. The first trained its lens on the doctrine’s absolutist potential, the second on its constitutionalist strain. To account for these political and literary shifts I turn to a larger trend in literary and humanistic studies, the desire to move away from ideology critique and to reframe the humanities in terms of its capacity to articulate “a new vision for human community,” to borrow Victoria Kahn’s phrase. I argue that the peculiarly ironic status of the king’s two bodies offers a way to intervene in this debate, which I term “the humanities’ two bodies.” The commentary concludes by offering Laertes’ popular rebellion in Hamlet as a brief test case of the limits and promise of this most recent turn in the career of Kantorowicz’s protean text.