User:Lemurred/Titus Andronicus

Hello sandbox

--v notes

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23127292?seq=8

- Historical idea that infants/children are knowable/"transparently understood by adults" <- relationship between Titus + Lavinia (+ other children) <- article arguing that TA (the play) critiques this

- Have we included bit where Titus killed son at beginning? Semi relevant

- ++ Titus' madness

- Titus' believed understanding of Lavinia's "signs" (vs. Marcus) connected to fatherhood

https://www.jstor.org/stable/44505192

- Filicide + family bonds

- Article arguing that TA critiques ancient Roman law/confirms more modern judicial system that limits father's power over children

- Abt dishonor, not abt family relationships <- Titus feels "dishonored" by son, + also feels dishonored by treatment of Lavinia, which leads to killing of son but apparently wildly different/caring treatment of Lavinia (+ then also murder so yea)

- Titus' loyalty towards Rome (how did Shakes feel abt Rome?)

- Titus' power over life + death (but not power over what happens to Lavinia/all the drama of the play itself) <- arguing that it's abt control?

- Titus vs. Aaron who won't kill son <- Abraham + son, part of bible where god was like "kill ur son," situations in which it is evil to not kill son, honor/duty/religion vs. self-centeredness

- Threatening of childrens' lives constant in play -> concern with parenthood/control/use of children as bargaining chips/proxies for whatever's going on w/parents but also children as discrete entities w/their own problems (?? Thinking abt Aaron + his concern over child's race/the language he uses surrounding that--Lavinia not quite the same?)

- Sanity/not of Titus' killing Lavinia <- shame/reaction of other characters, Saturninus "unnatural"/"unkind"

- "what authorizes [filicide/]such violence"; "danger of power"

https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1573346/1/Gregg.pdf

- filicide as indicative of "systemic violence" <- roman "honor code" of law, dishonoring

- Objective vs. subjective -> performance of murder by Titus gives "systemic violence" a person enacting it/becomes personalized

- Douglas E. Green "the fallibility of the system lies in those who operate it"

Heroism[edit]
Brown University Professor Coppélia Kahn identified Titus's development throughout the play as one from "Roman hero" to "revenge hero" in her 1997 novel Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds, and Women, in which she examines the role of gender in various Shakespeare plays through a feminist lens. In further scholarship, the presentation of heroism as a whole in the play has been explored through its inextricable link to violence in adherence to true Roman form.

Interpretation of Khan's two hero labels has incited the proposal of key distinctions between the facets of a "Roman hero" and "revenge hero." Titus as a "Roman hero" is a renowned and venerated war veteran, and he embodies the Roman ideal to such a notable degree that he is offered the greatest honor a Roman citizen can achieve: the emperorship. At the beginning of the play, he tends to prioritize the service of his country as well as the enforcement law and tradition over the protection of his family. Provided examples of this behavior include his sacrifice of many sons to the war effort and his murder of Mutius for the disobedience of his command. On the other hand, this reading highlights how Titus the "revenge hero" does the opposite, prioritizing a pursuit of vengeance on behalf of his family in defiance of law and order and committing crimes against other Roman citizens and the state as a whole. However, this interpretation delineates his development with a caveat, as Titus is never truly able to escape the mold of Roman ideals, committing filicide once again at the end of the play in line with tradition and family order.

Filicide
Titus' acts of filicide, of Mutius and of Lavinia, are contested onstage by characters including Titus' sons Lucius and Marcus and, in reference to Lavinia's death, Saturninus. In doing so, the play raises questions of the justification of filicide. In said justification, or, alternately, in the complaints against Titus' behavior, tensions arise between the Roman honor code of law and personal justice. Scholar Emily Detmer-Goebel points out the role of honor, and dishonoring, in Titus' filicides. Titus kills Mutius because he feels "insulted" and "dishonor[ed]" in a way, Detmer-Goebel argues, is tied to his allegiance with Rome; his familial relationship with Mutius has no bearing on the incident. The murder, additionally, can be seen as an expression, and critique, of the power in Roman society of a father over his children.

Titus' killing of Lavinia, on the other hand, is considered (through reference to the mythological filicide of Virginius) by Saturninus as justified through personal or family honor: "Because the girl should not survive her shame, / And by her presence still renew [the father's] sorrows." Titus, through the play, seems to come to regret Mutius' death, and his prioritization of "national justice" for Rome over "personal justice." According to Detmer-Goebel's reading, Titus' later "blind yet understandable anger" indicates his embrace of a sense of personal vengeance; and yet that very vengeance "endangers" his family (through the death of Lavinia).

Patriarchy[edit]
In Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds, and Women, Kahn highlights how Titus's revenge is motivated by the marring of his daughter's virtue rather than any offenses carried out against him directly. She asserts that Titus only transforms into one of the principle actors of revenge in the play due to his sense of ownership over Lavinia's virtue, an ownership that embodies the values of traditional patriarchal structures. Furthermore, she addresses Shakespeare's characterization of Lavinia as an almost excessive paragon of patriarchal womanhood, literally robbed of her voice and compliant as a prop in her father's revenge schemes, but never enacting revenge on her own. Titus eventually makes the choice to kill Lavinia as a show of mercy, motivated by the urge to spare her of living with the shame of having been defiled in such a gruesome manner. In Kahn's reading, this action solidifies Titus's role as a manifestation of patriarchal values, where the state in which his daughter can and should be allowed to exist falls under his own jurisdiction.