Thicker Than Water
Blood, Affinity, and Hegemony in Early Modern Drama
University of Alabama Press
Examines the discourses around the role of bloodlines and kinship in the social hierarchies of early modern Europe
“Blood is thicker than water,” goes the old proverb. But do common bloodlines in fact demand special duties or prescribe affections? Thicker than Water examines the roots of this belief by studying the omnipresent discourse of bloodlines and kindred relations in the literature of early modern Europe.
Early modern discourses concerning kinship promoted the idea that similar bloodlines dictated greater love or affinity, stabilizing the boundaries of families and social classes, as well as the categories of ethnicity and race. Literary representations of romantic relationships were instrumental in such conceptions, and Lauren Weindling examines how drama from England, France, and Italy tests these assumptions about blood and love, exposing their underlying political function. Among the key texts that Weindling studies are Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet¸ Othello, and The Merchant of Venice, Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid, Giambattista della Porta’s La Sorella and its English analog, Thomas Middleton’s No Wit/Help Like a Woman’s, John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, and Machiavelli’s La Mandragola.
Each of these plays offers an extreme limit case for early modern notions of belonging and exclusion, through plots of love, courtship, and marriage, including blood feuds and incest. Moreover, they feature the voices of marginalized groups, unprivileged by these metrics and ideologies, and thus offer significant counterpoints to this bloody worldview.
While most critical studies of blood onstage pertain to matters of guilt or violence, Thicker Than Water examines the work that blood does unseen in arbitrating social and emotional connections between persons, and thus underwriting our deepest forms of social organization.
“Blood is thicker than water,” goes the old proverb. But do common bloodlines in fact demand special duties or prescribe affections? Thicker than Water examines the roots of this belief by studying the omnipresent discourse of bloodlines and kindred relations in the literature of early modern Europe.
Early modern discourses concerning kinship promoted the idea that similar bloodlines dictated greater love or affinity, stabilizing the boundaries of families and social classes, as well as the categories of ethnicity and race. Literary representations of romantic relationships were instrumental in such conceptions, and Lauren Weindling examines how drama from England, France, and Italy tests these assumptions about blood and love, exposing their underlying political function. Among the key texts that Weindling studies are Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet¸ Othello, and The Merchant of Venice, Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid, Giambattista della Porta’s La Sorella and its English analog, Thomas Middleton’s No Wit/Help Like a Woman’s, John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, and Machiavelli’s La Mandragola.
Each of these plays offers an extreme limit case for early modern notions of belonging and exclusion, through plots of love, courtship, and marriage, including blood feuds and incest. Moreover, they feature the voices of marginalized groups, unprivileged by these metrics and ideologies, and thus offer significant counterpoints to this bloody worldview.
While most critical studies of blood onstage pertain to matters of guilt or violence, Thicker Than Water examines the work that blood does unseen in arbitrating social and emotional connections between persons, and thus underwriting our deepest forms of social organization.
While tightly focused on the enjoyably gruesome imagery of blood as it appears in Renaissance texts, Weindling’s study encompasses significantly larger cultural, political, and philosophical discussions, offering valuable insight into both the period and its literature. Weindling’s fascinating international scope presents major English dramatists in a wider European context, offering fresh perspectives, and making significant contribution to the medical humanities field. A wonderfully rich, generous, and stimulating study, gaining real interpretive rewards from its gory focus.’
—Eric Langley, author of Shakespeare's Contagious Sympathies
Lauren Weindling is a fellow at the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies at the University of Toronto. Her peer-reviewed scholarship has appeared in Studies in English Literature, Philological Quarterly, Cahiers du dix-septième siècle, and Early Modern Literary Studies.
Related Titles
None a Stranger There
England and/in Europe on the Early Modern Stage
Edited by Scott Oldenburg and Matteo Pangallo; Introduction by Scott Oldenburg and Matteo Pangallo
The English Physician
By Nicholas Culpeper; Edited by Michael A. Flannery; Introduction by Michael A. Flannery; Footnotes by Michael A. Flannery
