Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Series Editor’s Preface
- Introduction
- PART I MOTION
- Introduction: The Physics and Metaphysics of Metaphor
- 1 The Erotic Potential of Idleness in Lyly’s Drama
- 2 The ‘Raging Motions’ of Eros on Shakespeare’s Stage
- PART II SPACE
- Introduction: In Love
- 3 ‘A petty world of myself ’: Intimacy and Erotic Distance in Endymion
- 4 Binding the Void: The Erotics of Place in Antony and Cleopatra
- PART III CREATIVITY
- Introduction: Erotic Subject, Object, Instrument
- 5 ‘Love’s Use’ in Campaspe
- 6 ‘You lie, in faith’: Making Marriage in The Taming of the Shrew
- Conclusion: Metaphorical Constraints: Making ‘frenzy . . . Fine’
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - ‘You lie, in faith’: Making Marriage in The Taming of the Shrew
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 October 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Series Editor’s Preface
- Introduction
- PART I MOTION
- Introduction: The Physics and Metaphysics of Metaphor
- 1 The Erotic Potential of Idleness in Lyly’s Drama
- 2 The ‘Raging Motions’ of Eros on Shakespeare’s Stage
- PART II SPACE
- Introduction: In Love
- 3 ‘A petty world of myself ’: Intimacy and Erotic Distance in Endymion
- 4 Binding the Void: The Erotics of Place in Antony and Cleopatra
- PART III CREATIVITY
- Introduction: Erotic Subject, Object, Instrument
- 5 ‘Love’s Use’ in Campaspe
- 6 ‘You lie, in faith’: Making Marriage in The Taming of the Shrew
- Conclusion: Metaphorical Constraints: Making ‘frenzy . . . Fine’
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In this final chapter, I turn to the instrumental role of language itself as a medium of erotic experience. The ‘Desiring is Creating’ metaphor in The Taming of the Shrew depends upon the creative power of words, rather than an artist's pigments or a model's gestures, as erotic instruments. The subject of language is by no means new to this section's analysis of creativity; we already have seen Campaspe's euphuism and polysemy weave the lovers’ artistic and erotic experiences together. But, unlike the instruments of Lyly's lovers, Kate and Petruchio's art is itself an art of language; they creatively recruit words, stories and lies to make a marriage together. Words themselves act in The Taming of the Shrew – for Petruchio and Kate, they create – and this dynamic quality makes their language something more than solely instrumental. As Kenneth Burke explains,
Those who begin with the stress upon tools proceed to define language itself as a species of tool. But though instrumentality is an important aspect of language, we could not properly treat it as the essence of language. To define language simply as a species of tool would be like defining metals merely as a species of tools. Or like defining sticks and stones simply as primitive weapons. Edward Sapir's view of language as ‘a collective means of expression’ points in a more appropriate direction … Language is a species of action, symbolic action – and its nature is such that it can be used as a tool.
The ‘Desiring is Creating’ metaphor dramatises the dynamic quality of words: erotic language creates and is thus ‘a species of action’. For Kate and Petruchio specifically, their marriage-making project requires them to create a private world through language. Their language becomes as selfconsciously artificial as the synthetic world they build, not only in its often elaborate and even hyperbolic style, but also in its content – Petruchio and Kate's words are artfully styled, but they also are false in their substance, belying the truth of the real world.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Conceiving Desire in Lyly and ShakespeareMetaphor, Cognition and Eros, pp. 219 - 240Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2020