The Traumatic Real and Riddle of Che Vuoi?: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Beatrice-Joanna's Elusive Discourse in The Changeling

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This essay aims to explore a sexual-politics that Beatrice-Joanna's unfathomable desire may disclose in her relations to other male characters such as Vermandero, Alsemiro, and De Flores, in Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's early modern drama The Changeling (1622). For this inquiry, I employ the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, especially about the relationship between the fantasy and the real, the theories about hysteria and the discourse of the hysteric. Their theoretical and practical speculations on human desire would shed light on my investigation about how male narcissistic fantasy of mastering the Other (sex) is enacted throughout the play and, at the same time, how the (mis-)belief is undercut by the female protagonist's elusive discourse, reminding the audience or the reader of the discourse of the hysteric in Lacan's sense. Arguably, the intangibility informing Beatrice-Joanna's discourse like the traumatic real or riddle of anxiety-provoking question Che Vuoi? (What do you want?) in Lacan's sense persists in accusing and disrupting the male narcissistic fantasy of mastering the Other (sex) and, accordingly, contains a sexuopolitical significance striking enough to lead the audience to keep her or his critical distance from male-dominant, patriarchal reality.

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