渥坦貝克《夜鶯之愛》中之折曲劇場 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士論文. 指導教授：楊麗敏先生 Advisor: Carol L. Yang. 立. 政治大. 渥坦貝克《夜鶯之愛》中之折曲劇場. ‧ 國. 學. The Fold of the Theatre in Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Love of the. ‧. Nightingale. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 研究生：周泓儒. i n U. v. 撰. Name: Jesse Hung-Ju Chou 中華民國 108 年 6 月 June 2019. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(2) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(3) The Fold of the Theatre in Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nightingale. A Master Thesis Presented 治to 政大. 立Department of English,. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. National Chengchi University. n. In Partial Fulfilment. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. i n U. Ch. v. e n g cofhthei Degree of Of the Requirements Master of Arts. By Jesse Hung-Ju Chou June 2019. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(4) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(5) Acknowledgement This thesis is dedicated to my parents for their understanding of my intellectual pursuit. This dream is unrealistic and wild for my family; however, I still feel being warmly supported, and for this I will always be grateful. I would like to show my warm thank to my advisor, Prof. Carol L. Yang who supported me with her unconditional patience and immense knowledge, and without whom it was impossible to accomplish this thesis. I shall always remember Prof. Yang’s. 治政 words of encouragement which affirmed my potential in 大one of her classes, Approaches 立 to Literature, six years ago. This milestone has been and will always be the source of my ‧ 國. 學. faith and passion for literature studies. For me, she is more than a teacher. She is my. ‧. mentor and my nurturing mother in the academia.. y. Nat. Besides my advisor, I would also like to thank the rest of my thesis committee: Prof.. er. io. sit. Tsui-fen Jiang and Prof. Yi-Chin Shih, for their encouragement and careful reading. Their valuable advice during the viva further perfected this thesis. For this, I cannot thank. n. al. enough for their generosity.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. One can easily be a loner when immersing oneself in literature in this era. Thankfully, I have quite a few friends who make this journey less lonely and more joyful: Gloria Lai, Demi Lee, and Vivianne Lo. My special gratitude goes to Gloria for her companionship and encouragement, be it in those literature classes we have been through or during my first failure of getting admission to the MA programme. Writing this thesis along with teaching all this year, sometimes I was almost too exhausted to give up. It is my students in ASHNCCU who make me realise my responsibility as their model. Their trust and expectation make me force myself to. iii. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(6) persevere with my thesis in hope to be more capable of helping them intellectually. I am truly grateful for the sweetest burden and all the pleasure we shared in the classroom. Without their company, my life would have been too dull and easy, and my passion for being better me would have just perished. Last but not least, I would like to thank my partner Penny Chiang and my pet Solar for their spiritual support and unrequited tolerance. For me, their companionship lets me know what the shape of home is like.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. iv. i n U. v. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(7) Table of Contents Acknowledgement...................................................................................................................iii Chinese Abstract....................................................................................................................vii English Abstract......................................................................................................................ix Chapter 1 Introduction........................................................................................................11 1.1 Critical Background......................................................................................................13 1.2 Methodological Approach.............................................................................................22 1.3 Chapter Organisation.....................................................................................................24 Chapter 2 The Fold of the Theatre......................................................................................27 2.1. 政治大 The Love of the Nightingale and Translation Theory....................................................28 立. 2.2 Deleuze’s Baroque Fold................................................................................................35. ‧ 國. 學. 2.3 The Fold of the Theatre: the Repetition of the Fold......................................................48. ‧. Chapter 3 Wertenbaker’s Transformative Chorus Device in the Nightingale...............59. sit. y. Nat. 3.1 The Origin of the Greek Chorus....................................................................................60. io. er. 3.2 The Male Chorus: The Disruption of Univocality........................................................63 3.3 The Female Chorus: Silence as the Voice of Difference..............................................74. al. n. v i n Ch Conclusion.....................................................................................................................82 engchi U. 3.4. Chapter 4 Metatheatre and the Baroque Machine with Unlimited Openness...............85 4.1 In Search of a Fix for Metatheatre................................................................................88. 4.2 The Multiplicity of Love...............................................................................................94 4.3 Philomele’s Puppet Theatre and the Baroque Machine..............................................106 4.4 Conclusion...................................................................................................................115 Chapter 5 Conclusion........................................................................................................117 Works Cited..........................................................................................................................127. v. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(8) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. vi. i n U. v. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(9) 國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班碩士論文摘要論文名稱：渥坦貝克《夜鶯之愛》中之折曲劇場指導教授：楊麗敏教授研究生：周泓儒論文摘要內容：. 立. 政治大. 本論文視渥坦貝克的《夜鶯之愛》為折曲劇場，劇中巴洛克機器(Baroque. ‧ 國. 學. machine)無止無休在觀者之思想平面上製造折曲(fold)與問題。過去批評家多著眼於本劇之女性主義面向，而本論文試圖跳脫以性別對立為主的簡單閱讀，視. ‧. 本劇為開放系統，並借鏡班雅明之翻譯理論與德勒茲之折曲理論，以進一步分. y. Nat. al. er. io. sit. 析此劇的操作功能(operative function)。劇作家在本劇中藉由裝配多重文本，觸. n. 發不同角色間橫跨時間、空間、與文化界線的對話，透過劇場手法像是吟詠隊. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. (chorus)與後設劇場(metatheatre)的縝密部署，劇作家改寫之文本得以共同運作，使折曲不斷被製造，進而複雜化此劇的閱讀維度。巴洛克折曲作為本劇運作的主要力量，使《夜鶯之愛》中所呈現的劇場成為折曲劇場，旨在保留最大程度的多重性(multiplicity)與開放性(openness)，而非終結未來任何可能閱讀視角。. 關鍵字：渥坦貝克，《夜鶯之愛》，折曲劇場，折曲，巴洛克折曲，機器，翻. 譯，多重性. vii. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(10) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. viii. i n U. v. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(11) Abstract This thesis sees Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nightingale as the fold of the theatre in which the Baroque machine endlessly produces folds and questions on the audience's thinking plane. Critics in the past mostly focused on the feminist aspect of the play. This thesis attempts to go beyond the simple. 政治大. reading of the play as gender opposition. It reads the play as an open system and. 立. further analyses the operative function of the play through the lenses of Walter. ‧ 國. 學. Benjamin’s translation theory and Gilles Deleuze’s theory of the Baroque fold.. ‧. The playwright’s assemblage of multiple texts in the play facilitates the dialogues. sit. y. Nat. among different characters across the boundary of space, time, and culture. Such. n. al. er. io. revisions operate together through the delicate employment of theatrical devices. i n U. v. such as chorus and metatheatre, and the folds are therefore incessantly produced. Ch. engchi. to complicate the dimensions of the play. With the Baroque fold as the major force that operates in the play, the theatre presented in The Love of the Nightingale is the fold of theatre which aims to maintain the maximum multiplicity and openness of the play instead of finalising any possible readings in the future.. Keywords: Timberlake Wertenbaker, The Love of the Nightingale, the fold of the theatre, fold , Baroque fold, machine, translation, multiplicity. ix. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(12) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. x. i n U. v. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(13) Chapter 1 Introduction. No other contemporary playwrights can be labelled so differently as much as Timberlake Wertenbaker. Over the past three decades, Wertenbaker’s plays have been labelled variously: “feminist, state-of-the-nation, melodramatic,. 政治大. romantic comedy, Chekhovian, Shavian, Rabelaisian, intellectual, intelligent,. 立. silly, cartoon, lyrical, witty, optimistic, sardonic, satirical and compassionate”. ‧ 國. 學. (Bush, The Theatre of Timberlake Wertenbaker 269). These labels on the one hand. ‧. indicate the critics’ ceaseless efforts to define the playwright and her works; on. Nat. sit. y. the other hand, the labels also suggest the multiplicity of the playwright’s works.. n. al. er. io. The undecidability and the transformativity of Wertenbaker’s works greatly. Ch. i n U. v. perplex the critics who are instinctively involved in the Sisyphusean journey of. engchi. defining her works and her as a playwright. Especially, among all of these labels, the feminist reading is no doubt the mainstream approach due to the repetitive emergence of revisions of historical and cultural female figures in her plays. The Love of the Nightingale, which was firstly put on stage in 1988, is generally seen as one of her plays which obviously entail the theme of feminism. However, although this play is generally considered to be the work about the victimisation of female figures, the play in fact shows the playwright’s attempt to. 11. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(14) go beyond female suffering to incorporate the issues of languages, nations, races, and even classes in this play. In this way, the play is no longer merely about female suffering; instead, the revisions of the diverse texts construct a more complicated web for the audience to see the correlation of all the themes which people used to think unrelated. In revising ancient texts with such complexity, Wertenbaker highlights the sense of incessant transformation and fluidity among these diverse narratives. She moves and displaces these ancient. 政治大. texts to the presence, while the meanings of the play do not just stop at the. 立. moment. In fact, the play’s meanings are always drifting in the flux of. ‧ 國. 學. undecidability.. ‧. Neither about the past nor the present, the revisions in The Love of the. sit. y. Nat. Nightingale are a significant gesture of pointing to the future. However, this. n. al. er. io. future does not guarantee a better world to come. As Wertenbaker states, the. i n U. v. activity of reading or watching a play is anything but sheer optimism. Ch. engchi. (Wertenbaker, Plays Two viii). As a result, The Love of the Nightingale is just a play that celebrates the uncertainty. The confrontation of different texts and narratives brings about perennial becoming, even though neither the playwright nor the audience can be sure what the play will become in the end. Therefore, how Timberlake Wertenbaker turns on the operation among diverse materials to accomplish indefinite transformation becomes the foremost issue which awaits to be answered.. 12. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(15) 1.1 Critical Background Right after Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nightingale was first put on stage in 1988 by the Royal Shakespeare Company at The Other Place, Stratford, the play soon received critical responses in the same year. Christine Dymkowski points out that the playwright’s use of metatheatrical devices precisely “engage[s] the audience in a dialectical relationship with the action on stage” and problematises the definitions of comedy and tragedy through the. 政治大. elaborate questions within the play (129). Obviously, what first draws the critic’s. 立. attention is the playwright’s endeavour to make the connection between the. ‧ 國. 學. world of the play and that of the audience. It is the subtle use of metatheatrical. ‧. devices in the Nightingale that enables the audience to have self-reflexive. sit. y. Nat. experience as they are watching the play and therefore “involve in the creation of. n. al. er. io. meaning” (131). Dymkowski’s immediate but insightful response to the play. i n U. v. undoubtedly paves the road for the following critics. Two years later, David Ian. Ch. engchi. Rabey further explicates the function of “incessant moral revaluation” (527) through the playwright’s highlight of the activity of questioning (525). This facilitates the audience to align themselves with the play to brood over the relations of “asking questions, making judgement, and being human” (527). In addition, Rabey also touches upon the issue of dispossession in the play (526) that makes it possible for the following critics to explore the issue of being silenced and rethink the definition of truth.. 13. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(16) Both critics successfully capture some of the Nightingale’s most significant aspects. However, these insightful points still seem to be too broad to fully unravel the complexity of the play. One of the most prevailing critical aspects is from a close reading of feminist issues in Wertenbaker’s plays. Although Wertenbaker avoids herself being called a feminist writer,1 her plays are still being read and canonised by quite an array of feminist critics. In her essay, “Forgiving History and Making New Worlds,” Ann Wilson. 政治大. directs the critical discussions of the Nightingale to feminist dimensions. Inspired. 立. by Rabey’s discussion about dispossession (148), Wilson’s reading primarily. ‧ 國. 學. orbits around female dislocation and silence. She raises a question as a pivot to. ‧. extend the previous discussion: “how can we speak of oppression when language. sit. y. Nat. is itself shaped by the dominant ideology?” (146). She scrutinises the relationship. n. al. er. io. of language, knowledge, and the meaning of being silenced. Different forms of. i n U. v. silence become Wilson’s central concerns including Niobe’s willing silence and. Ch. engchi. Philomele and Procne’s silence because of their respective mutilation and dislocation (158). These silences, on the one hand, represent women being. 1. In a radio interview broadcast at BBC 4 on 20 June 1991, Timberlake Wertenbaker replies to the host’s questions about whether she accepts that her works are labelled as feminist plays: “No. Because I don’t think people know what they mean when they say ‘radical feminist’. I don’t know how I got that reputation. People used to ask me if I was a feminist, or a feminist writer. Well, of course I’m a feminist, but what does that mean? What’s so good about feminism is that it is so broad” (qtd. in Contemporary Feminist Theatres: To Each Her Own 31). To read this interview superficially and literally, Wertenbaker does identify herself as a feminist. However, what matters to her is not about forging the identity as a feminist; on the contrary, it is the “broad” agency feminism brings that is valuable to her. 14. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(17) excluded from knowledge, while on the other hand they also “frame the words,” which means it is impossible for women to fully perceive the world if silence simply symbolises limitation on women (157). In light of this implication, Wilson then argues that Wertenbaker leaves these silences for granted so that the play or the playwright is also “silent about the solution” to questioning and challenging the social production of gender role (159). She suggests an urgent need for the playwright to create a definite way to “deny that woman is the complement to. 政治大. man” and take advantage of this asymmetry based on silence to create gaps to. 立. “allow the authority of the patriarchy to crumble” (160). In other words, it is the. ‧ 國. 學. artist who should create a “new language” outside the patriarchal structure of. ‧. knowledge so that “we [women] can begin to make new worlds” (160).. sit. y. Nat. Obviously, Wilson’s reading is more of radical feminism.2 To some extent,. n. al. er. io. the following feminist criticisms on the Nightingale follow Wilson’s primary. i n U. v. research. For example, Michelene Wandor provides a sharp contrast to the. Ch. engchi. conventional dualism between men and women in her essay and asserts that the playwright specifically “gives greater theatrical power to women” (218). Besides,. 2. As Michelene Wandor argues, the conventional male/female opposition serves as a major part of radical feminism (218). In light of this, it is obvious that Wilson’s criticism is more of radical feminism because she strongly emphasises the women’s stories in the Nightingale. We can see this tendency especially when Wilson claims that the playwright does not “question the social production of motherhood as a role” and that the play which fails to subvert this universal, stereotypical image of “women” results in “maintain[ing] the authority of the patriarchy” (160). Overall, Wilson’s criticism, in my opinion, should be categorized as radical feminism for sure. 15. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(18) different features of radical feminism, socialist feminism, bourgeois feminists3 are categorised in Wandor’s critique on the Nightingale (219). In Mary Joanne Farrell’s reading, the issue of silence is once again examined. For instance, she argues that Philomele is the heroine who can “combat” against patriarchal system only by “re-creating herself as a speaking subject” (193). A few years later, YiChin Shih takes a similar step further to expand her argument from a gender oriented perspective of history in order to further examine how several female. 政治大. figures set up their own subjectivity against “male-centred oral history of myth”. 立. (206). Finally, a meticulous investigation of different schools of feminism has. ‧ 國. 學. been offered by Nursen Gömceli in her radical feminist reading which once. ‧. again emphasises “the oppressive nature of patriarchy” and “the concept and. sit. y. Nat. practice of sisterhood” as the source of resistant power in the Nightingale (177).. er. io. Undoubtedly, the feminist approach of reading to the Nightingale has been rather. al. n. v i n C hfeminism aims to U According to Aston’s definition, radical “contest the patriarchal i e h n c g organisation of society” (127) and to promote female values and experiences 3. specifically. Therefore, Wandor argues that in the Nightingale the dualism between men and women is clearly represented. For instance, men in the play are often depicted as violent, unethical and love to wage war while women are much more caring and express their desire poetically, and yet of course they are also “passive, powerless” (218). The socialist feminist reading of the Nightingale, as Wandor states, demonstrates that the world is differentiated “existentially, morally and emotionally” (219). In light of this, both men and women cannot escape from the domination of the more powerful one, which is why the Captain is killed by Tereus in the play. Lastly, the theme of bourgeois feminism can be noticed when Procne is aware of her fate and that of her sister’s. Through the use of metatheatrical devices, the questions largely raised by women in the Nightingale combine the “issue of gender, issues of social and moral power” rooted in the original Greek myth (218). In other words, bourgeois feminist critiques do not merely focus on the issues of gender or particularize the role of women. Instead, these critiques aim to elevate women’s status as men’s so as to manifest more general moral and political questions. 16. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(19) fruitful, and feminist critics’ ambition to canonise Wertenbaker’s plays as feminist ones is also ubiquitous. After the shower of feminist criticism, some of the scholarly reviews seem to liberate the Nightingale with more open examination than ever and surely worth our further noticing. First, Jennifer A. Wagner, who is also influenced by Rabey’s dispossession of language, argues that Wertenbaker achieves “the renewal of an active audience dynamic” through her parodic use of metathearical. 政治大. devices to recreate both an ancient myth and the ancient dramatic form of the. 立. Greek mythology (227-228). Wagner is the first one that borrows Linda. ‧ 國. 學. Hutcheon’s postmodern theory of parody to scrutinise Wertenbaker’s use of. ‧. metathearical devices. Instead of calling for the invention of a new language as. sit. y. Nat. Wilson claims, Wagner points out that Wertenbaker makes good use of feminist. n. al. er. io. theatre’s dynamic quality to renew “the structure of the contemporary theatrical. i n U. v. experience” from within the patriarchal system (228). Joe Winston’s “Re-Casting. Ch. engchi. the Phaedra Syndrome: Myth and Morality in Timberlake Wertenbaker's The Love of the Nightingale” examines how the Phaedra Syndrome4 permeates every corner of the society and ultimately results in collective social oppression. He. 4. Winston argues that the so-called Phaedra Syndrome is actually termed and defined by men (511). This term is originally used by men to describe a stepmother’s forbidden desire for her stepson as “a threat to the moral and social order” (511). In this way, sex, guilt, and shame are all labelled on the female. Therefore, feminism aims to expose the artificiality of this label in order to manifest the false recognition of female sexuality. Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nightingale is no doubt one of the best examples for further analysis due to its combination of diverse materials concerning the silenced female and their sexuality. 17. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(20) argues that the mutilation of Philomele and the contemporary questions raised by the female chorus in the play are linked together to manifest the “silencing of oppressed people both today and throughout history” (515). Similar to Wagner’s argument concerning ethical issues, Winston urges an “ethical need for female voices to engage dialogically with the tradition in order to bring it to new moral understandings” (512). Moreover, Wertenbaker’s allusion and subtle intertextuality are meant to activate “moral understanding by interrogating. 政治大. cultural values” (518) in order to shape the audience’s actions. In this reading,. 立. Wertenbaker’s interrogation in the play seems to be specified as didactic. ‧ 國. 學. interrogation which essentially entails the social function as a result.. ‧. About a decade ago, an anthology further examines Timberlake. sit. y. Nat. Wertenbaker’s plays through the methodology of translation studies which help. n. al. er. io. provide broader perspectives on the relations of language, histories, cultures,. i n U. v. and translation. A series of essays take this new route to approach the complexity. Ch. engchi. of Wertenbaker’s plays. Jay M. Gipson-King, for instance, remarks upon the idea that history is just like “a text to be translated” (223). Revealing history as a manipulative and constructed narrative, the critic makes an effort to redeem all the materials within and without the Nightingale, even including the discussion about the audience’s reflection on their role when they are watching the play. Not only can the audience start to think about the ethical question, they are also “aware of their own role as witness to history” (228). This way, the ancient and. 18. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(21) fictional Greek tales transform into “an immediate question” (229) and unfold/fold the relationship between history and contemporary “global violence” (230) beyond the traditional sense of time. Aside from the rising attention on translation and transcultural issues in Wertenbaker’s play, Ju Ying Ho analyses Wertenbaker’s Nightingale with the theoretical framework of Deleuzian philosophy. She mines out a new approach for readers to be conscious of the concepts such as deterritorialization,. 政治大. becoming-animal, and reterritorialization, which can further demonstrate the. 立. effect of translation and transformation in the Nightingale (Ho 11). Moreover, as. ‧ 國. 學. Ho points out the ideas of floating, difference, and multiplicity in the play, she. ‧. focuses on the possibilities of transgression which could be traced along the. sit. y. Nat. transformation and boundary-crossing of Philomele and Procne. Several lines of. n. al. er. io. flight can be readily discovered in Ho’s Deleuzian reading. In a broader sense, by. i n U. v. interweaving the mythological narratives and the public speech, Wertenbaker’s. Ch. engchi. dramaturgy realises Delueze's concept of the minor literature in which the language has also completed the process of deterritorialisation (14). The critiques on the Nightingale, however, are still blossoming out with various ways of reading. Despite the diverse readings by an array of critics, certain aspects of the play remain unexplored. First of all, the Nightingale as a play with female suffering and silence does have a charm for critics to label it as a feminist play, and Wertenbaker a feminist playwright. Wilson, for example,. 19. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(22) urges a need of a new language to “create a new knowledge of the world, one which potentially would be able to accommodate the articulation of utopia” (158). Apparently, Wilson’s vision is that the play could outline a brave new world which can beam a new direction in terms of gender issues. The intention of Wertenbaker’s search of a new language for feminism therefore becomes the feminist critics’ major concern.5 Perhaps Wilson’s unrest and concerns are reasonable since Sara Freeman. 政治大. points out the aporia which brings about a strong sense of undecidability that. 立. unsettles the feminist critics:. ‧ 國. 學. the first range of scholarly assessments [feminist critiques] struggled with. ‧. how to position theatre that probed such crucial questions but which. sit. y. Nat. didn’t seek to shatter traditional modes of representation and often. n. al. er. io. affirmed more about European culture, literature and history than. i n U. v. expected. (Modern British Playwriting: the 80s: Voices, Documents, New Interpretations 217). Ch. engchi. Indeed, it is very difficult to define the entire play as a subversive, radical, and feminist play just because of its partial colour of feminism. The attitude of the play toward the classic theatre or the patriarchal system seems ambiguous from. 5. Critics such as Maya E. Roth and Susan Carlson have ever highlighted Wertenbaker’s social intention to transform the social relation and to generate dialogues about what kind of future we want to pass to the children. For more details, please see Maya E. Roth’s “The Philomela Myth as Postcolonial Feminist Theatre” and Susan Carlson’s “Language and Identity in Timberlake Wertenbaker's plays.” 20. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(23) the perspective of feminism (Monrós-Gaspar 2). Even though certain plots are seemingly arranged to endow the female characters with more power and agency to reverse their situation in the Nightingale, it also seems futile when it comes to the final part of the play where Philomele as a nightingale converses with Itys, and when both of them offer no clear solution or answer, let alone a new vision for the new world. Therefore, in this sense, the efforts to politically categorise the Nightingale. 政治大. as a feminist play seems too restrictive to explore the potentials of the play.6. 立. Geraldine Cousin remarks that the Nightingale is an “interrogative play” which. ‧ 國. 學. puts more emphasis on “debate and questioning and encodes the belief that great. ‧. value lies in the search for justice” (115). In this regard, to examine whether. sit. y. Nat. Wertenbaker single-mindedly provides a definite perspective in terms of any. n. al. er. io. certain issues is to fit the play into some rigid parameter and to limit the play’s. i n U. v. operative function of facilitating reflexive questions and the value of the play.. Ch. engchi. As I have just mentioned above, Wertenbaker’s plays have recently received some critical reviews from the field of translation studies. Maya E. Roth has pointed out that Wertenbaker’s plays demonstrate “an artistic and political. 6. In an interview by Heidi Stephenson and Natasha Langridge, Wertenbaker, as a matter of fact, strongly rejects the idea that women gain power in order to change the world. For the playwright, this claim is kind of “naïve,” “extreme,” and “dangerous” idealism. It does not matter who holds the power because “[p]ower is power” according to Wertenbaker. In light of this, the playwright advocates that feminists have to take a broader understanding on the complexity of power structure instead of fixating on the radical power reversal (Rage and Reason 140-141). 21. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(24) commitment to hearing the multivocality of traditions and sources aligns with her artistic and political commitment to hearing the multivocality of language and identity, the plurality of culture and history” (“Introduction” 12). In addition, Wertenbaker’s playwriting “move[s] across so many borders of epoch, genre, source, culture, language tradition, and nation” (“Introduction” 15). Hence, any reading that aims to finalise the interpretation of Wertenbaker’s plays would seem too arbitrary. To avoid the arbitrary readings, it might be more appropriate. 政治大. to scrutinise the play through the lenses of translation studies and the concept of. 立. the Baroque fold. By incorporating both theories, we can genuinely activate the. ‧ 國. 學. conversation among different issues so as to resist labels which may restrict the. ‧. potential meanings of the play.. sit. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. 1.2 Methodological Approach. i n U. v. In explicating Wertenbaker’s delicate juxtaposition of diverse texts in her. Ch. engchi. Nightingale, critics such as Roth has paved a royal road for us to discover the relation between the Nightingale and translation theory. Due to Wertenbaker’s diverse juxtaposition of diverse texts, the translative relation between these diverse texts becomes central to my concern. Therefore, Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator” would serve as my starting point for my further research of the play.. 22. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(25) By adopting Benjamin’s idea that the language of translation which “envelops its content like a royal robe with ample folds” (258), the thesis aims to foreground the afterlife of the original and the translation. In other words, the translation “envelops” the original and further results in multiplying the possibility of the original. In this sense, translation is by no means a simple double of the original; instead, it creates ambiguity and ambivalence and makes the original transform during the process of translation. This is what Benjamin. 政治大. calls the “perpetually renew[ing] life of language” (260) or more bluntly, the. 立. “afterlife” of the original (254). The significance of the concept of the afterlife. ‧ 國. 學. lies in the revelation of multiplicity, which is to say, no translation is capable of. ‧. finalising, dominating, or eliminating any possible readings. Therefore, in. sit. y. Nat. Wertenbaker’s Nightingale, the texts crossing times, spaces, and cultures are. n. al. er. io. represented in dialogues without limiting one another’s possibilities. In this. i n U. v. sense, Benjamin’s translation theory challenges the idea of representation which. Ch. engchi. aims to highlight the only one possible mimesis of the original. Since Wertenbaker stated that her plays “stopped dividing the world into gender” (qtd. in Mackenzie), Wertenbaker’s theatre has embodied “an overall shift […] from an emphasis on gender to a focus on culture” (Freeman 646). In this sense, perhaps the playwright’s concern can be considered to be about outside instead of inside the text. Coincidentally, Wertenbaker’s statement and Freeman’s observation closely echo the playwright’s attitude toward the. 23. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(26) Nightingale in the introduction to her Timberlake Wertenbaker: Plays 1: “Although it [the Nightingale] has been interpreted as being about men and women, I was actually thinking about the violence that erupts in societies when they have been silenced for too long” (viii). Therefore, in my thesis, I would like to scrutinise Wertenbaker’s Nightingale under this broader direction so as to counteract the one-dimensional gendered reading of the play. Gilles Deleuze’s Baroque fold can help us march forward to deal with the operative function of the theatrical. 政治大. devices which serve as several Baroque machines that generate folds and. 立. complexity and turn the whole play toward multiplicity and openness.. ‧ 國. 學 ‧. 1.3 Chapter Organisation. sit. y. Nat. In the first chapter of my thesis, I would try to formulate a theoretical. n. al. er. io. framework for my interpretation of The Love of the Nightingale. By further. i n U. v. looking into Walter Benjamin’s translation theory and Gilles Deleuze’s Baroque. Ch. engchi. fold, this thesis aims to clearly define the idea of the fold of the theatre as a specific term for my interpretation of the play. The newly created theoretical premise will be incorporated in my discussion in hope to explicate Wertenbaker’s theatre as the Baroque fold, which aims to engender a number of questions and undecidability in the audience’s thinking. As for the second chapter of the thesis, in order to fully grasp the use of the Greek chorus, I would primarily investigate the use of this theatrical device over. 24. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(27) the course of history. The second part of this chapter will mainly concentrate on Wertenbaker’s appropriation of the male chorus in the play and bring out my argument about the male chorus’s role as the symbol of univocality. The analysis of the female chorus will follow the discussion about the male chorus, which presents the counter idea of the play, multiplicity. By doing so, this chapter will ultimately demonstrate the playwright’s arrangement of these two counter choruses as the transition from univocality to multiplicity, which also gives. 政治大. another perspective on the complexity of silence as another language in a. 立. broader sense.. ‧ 國. 學. Ensuing from the former chapters, the third chapter aims to illustrate how. ‧. Wertenbaker’s unique use of metatheatre in the play succeeds in liberating the. sit. y. Nat. different texts revised and incorporated. Moreover, certain parts of the play. n. al. er. io. relate to one another as part-to-part and machine-to-machine relation which. i n U. v. enables the audience to interrogate to infinity. In this sense, the argument that the. Ch. engchi. play as a Baroque machine points to infinite openness can be proved tenable. To make the play a Baroque machine with unlimited openness, Wertenbaker’s metatheatre is the best model for exemplifying the fold of the theatre. To sum up, this thesis attempts to re-examine the Nightingale by the “Baroque fold” which creates several transformations among different texts. In doing so, the play itself flees from oppositions, clichés, and univocality. With the. 25. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(28) approach of “the topology of thought”7 to scrutinise the Nightingale, the operation of the Baroque fold presumably helps the play escape from being rigidly categorised and defined. The theatre of Wertenbaker and the Nightingale is the fold of the theatre which incessantly generates questions (folds) through “folding, unfolding, and refolding” (The Fold 137).. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. 7. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. “The topology of thought” helps us trace the transformation that happens among different materials. It forces us to get closer to the margins, or as Deleuze in Difference and Repetition puts it, by reaching our limits, we can “separate our knowledge from our ignorance and transforms the one into another” (4). The dualism of knowledge and ignorance has been mutually converted. Ignorance or the “unthought,” in Deleuze’s definition, is the outside of one’s thinking. Therefore, in his Foucault, Deleuze further deals with the philosophical issue of the inside and the outside. He uses “fold” to demonstrate the moment when the breakdown of binary opposition of the inside and the outside becomes possible. In his sense, “the topology of thought” is to flip ideas and that, in brief, is to “fold.” The fold, as a way of topological thinking, plays a vital part that makes both the inside-space “co-present” with the outside-space (118). Furthermore, through spatializing the relation of the inside and the outside as a two-floor Baroque building (The Fold 5), Deleuze explicates the fact that the outside or the unthought is the core of his philosophy. By making the inside and the outside fiercely confront with each other, Deleuze demonstrates the impossible confrontation of extremities. This topological operation, to him, is to fold. 26. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(29) Chapter 2 The Fold of the Theatre. In this chapter, I would start from the term “translation” which is often associated with Timberlake Wertenbaker’s plays. In addition to the given. 政治大. research done by the critics, Walter Benjamin’s translation theory would be. 立. incorporated in my discussion of the effect of translation in Wertenbaker’s The. ‧ 國. 學. Love of the Nightingale. Furthermore, to explicate the multiplicity of. ‧. interpretations in The Love of the Nightingale, Gilles Deleuze’s The Fold can help. sit. y. Nat. this chapter explore the bond between the original and the text in a deeper sense.. n. al. er. io. In this way, a theoretical premise would be created in the third section of this. i n U. v. chapter based on Benjamin’s translation theory and Deleuze’s Baroque fold. In. Ch. engchi. order to distinguish the quality of Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nightingale from others, a few comparisons would be discussed to define Wertenbaker’s fold of the theatre. In fact, the fold of the theatre not only suggests “fold” as a way of reexamining the play and mining out multiple potentials of it, but also explicates Wertenbaker’s theatre as the Baroque fold, which produces more folds and questions in the audience’s thinking plane. Therefore, the closeness of the. 27. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(30) theatre and the fold brings out a new perspective against the simplified readings and labels on The Love of the Nightingale.. 2.1 The Love of the Nightingale and Translation Theory Many of Wertenbaker’s plays are generally recognised by critics as translation plays due to her displacement of various materials that traverse across cultures, nations, identities, times, and spaces. In this way, the original. 政治大. text has been transplanted to fit the reader’s contemporary reading. Based on. 立. these characteristics, Wertenbaker’s playwriting can be regarded as. ‧ 國. 學. “translational theatre” in Maya E. Roth’s definition (“Introduction” 12).8. ‧. Especially her plays, such as The Grace of Mary Traverse (1985), Our Country’s. sit. y. Nat. Good (1988), The Love of the Nightingale (1989), The Ash Girl (2000), are. n. al. er. io. interwoven with multiple layers of literary and cultural works so as to. i n U. v. complicate the conversations between the original and the translation. When. Ch. engchi. discussing The Love of the Nightingale, Roth particularly points out that this play as one of Wertenbaker’s second wave of works represents “the translation ethic” built on a much freer and interwoven way so as to generate intertextual dialogues across times, spaces, and cultures (“Introduction” 14). Coincidentally in an interview, Wertenbaker states that “when you write a historical play, your. 8. In fact, Maya E. Roth asserts that all of Wertenbaker’s plays can be seen as translations to some degree which are “infused by her rigorous engagement with diverse source materials” (13). 28. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(31) first concern is to ask what its contemporary resonance is” (qtd. in Milling 237). In this sense, Wertenbaker’s ideas toward historical play concur with Roth’s analysis of the translational materials in The Love of the Nightingale. Both of them seem to agree that the function of translation or the play is to open up the space for conversations among various materials and seek for interactive construction of meaning as a result. In addition, Wertenbaker also points out that translation not only “changes”. 政治大. but also “moves” and “displaces” something (“First Thought on Transforming a. 立. Text” 35). In this sense, what matters to the playwright is how to correlate. ‧ 國. 學. different materials across historical time and create significant meanings for the. ‧. contemporary world. Most importantly, the playwright’s translation does not. sit. y. Nat. mean to radically erase or deconstruct the original; instead, translation. n. al. er. io. “collaborates” with the original by displacing the text to some places where. i n U. different types of materials could meet one another.. Ch. engchi. v. Now that the role of translation in Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nightingale can be fairly identified, I would like to take a further step to explore how translation works in terms of the relation between the original and the translation based on Benjamin’s translation theory. Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator” can primarily provide us with insightful ideas to tackle the issues condensed in The Love of the Nightingale. First of all, Benjamin’s ideas of translation theory are anything but the same old pursuit of fidelity of translation.. 29. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(32) Instead, his bold proposition vividly demonstrates the overall relation between the content and the language: “[w]hereas content and language form a certain unity in the original, like a fruit and its skin, the language of translation envelops its content like a royal robe with ample folds” (“Task” 258). By describing the relation of the content and the language as “a fruit and its skin,” Benjamin reveals the tensional relation between the content and the language, also aiming to develop a broader understanding of the use of translation with “folds.” In other. 政治大. words, the fixed relation of the content and the language can be “enveloped”. 立. through translations because “even words with fixed meaning can undergo a. ‧ 國. 學. maturing process” (“Task” 256).. ‧. The comparative images of tightness and looseness indicate the innovative. sit. y. Nat. function of translation. Language itself may have fixed association between any. n. al. er. io. signified and signifier. Nonetheless, the real use of translation, in Benjamin’s. i n U. v. sense, is to challenge, unsettle, or liberate from the fixed chain of meaning and. Ch. engchi. the sign system by “turn[ing] the symbolizing into the symbolized itself” (“Task 261) and “a royal robe with ample folds.” That is to say, intertexturalising different languages together is just like covering the original with a robe with folds, placing a layer after another. Translation does not eradicate the original but multiplies the complexity of different materials. In this sense, the fixed bond of the language is endowed with new possibilities after undergoing the process of translation.. 30. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(33) In addition, only by saying good riddance to the restriction of the sign system can the translation and the translator endeavor to undertake “the special mission of watching over the maturing process of the original language and the birth pangs of its own” (“Task” 256). In light of this, translation is no longer about expressing messages but about being expressionless9, creative, and gradual transformation among different languages and their “afterlife” (“Task” 254). This way, the translation can be placed onto a higher status through this. 政治大. topological approach of tracing the “maturing process” of words and languages.. 立. The process of change is as crucial as what is changed.. ‧ 國. 學. In order to understand the “suprahistorical kinship” between different. ‧. languages, Benjamin further looks into this special phenomenon of translation:. sit. y. Nat. “in every one of them as a whole, one and the same thing is meant. Yet this one. n. al. er. io. thing is achievable not by any single language but only by the totality of their. i n U. v. intentions supplementing one another: pure language” (“Task” 257). To put it. Ch. engchi. differently, every different language as a part of “the one” can supplement one another (through folds of kinship despite the alienation of languages) in order to achieve the totality of language which entails limitless potentials and possibilities of the afterlife of the language. Pure language refers to the state of transparency when one language can shine upon each other without degrading one another. 9. To be more specific, translation does not serve the presumed and obliged function of expressing information. The functions of translation in this sense go beyond the universal acknowledgement of expressing information; instead, translation points to a more creative and artistic function. This is what Benjamin means by “expressionless.”. 31. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(34) (“Task” 260). By doing so, the real translation can “perpetually renew life of language” and elevate the original “into a higher and purer linguistic air” (“Task” 257). In light of this, Benjamin quotes Rudolf Panniwitz to contest the general idea of translation: “Our translations, even the best ones, proceed from a mistaken premise. They want to turn Hindi, Greek, English into German instead of turning German into Hindi, Greek, English” (“Task” 261). For Benjamin, it is the translator’s task to uncover unfamiliar materials within one’s own language. 政治大. so as to unfold the kinship and alienation of one another at the same time and. 立. affirm the “afterlife” of the translated languages.. ‧ 國. 學. Even so, Walter Benjamin’s idea of pure language still sounds utopian to. ‧. some extent, for if each translation only produces more fragments by combining. sit. y. Nat. different fragments, how can this process point to achieve totality at the same. n. al. er. io. time? To be more specific, the process of defragmentation works along with. i n U. v. fragmentation simultaneously without being closer to the wholeness. In a rigid. Ch. engchi. sense, the whole process of pure language and translation is paradoxical and the pursuit of the totality of language is unreachable, impractical, and even tantalizing. Be that as it may, Benjamin’s idea still evokes another aspect of discussion about translation as “aesthetic resistance” (Baltrusch 124). Burghard Baltrusch foregrounds the message hidden in the original German title of “The Task of the Translator”—“Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers.” According to Baltrusch, the. 32. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(35) German word Aufgabe has double meanings: in addition to “the never-ending task” of ensuring the continuous life of the original, Aufgabe also means the “abandonment” or “resignation” to the faith of the wholeness of translation. In this sense, the double movement of translation is in fact an act of refusal to any grand narrative which is dominated by a certain power. Therefore, even though pure language and translation might seem to represent only “utopia,” it can also be seen as “a form of resistance against the loss of meaning and truth that is. 政治大. ubiquitous in the ongoing process of cultural globalization,” and in the end this. 立. double movement of translation can ensure the coming of more possible. ‧ 國. 學. meanings and subvert the totalitarian practice (Baltrusch 124).. ‧. The relation of the original and translation, in Benjamin’s example, is just. sit. y. Nat. like “a tangent touches a circle lightly and at but one point” which goes along. n. al. er. io. toward infinity (“Task” 261). This very example suggests the significant moment. i n U. v. when the freedom of languages has been achieved to activate the transformation. Ch. engchi. among different languages. In light of this, to pursue the point or the moment of the transformation becomes a translator’s major task. Of course, it is also the main job for a playwright if one attempts to make all the transformations possible among different texts. Taking the translation theory proposed by Benjamin as above into consideration, the thesis intends to raise two essential questions in justification of my argument—can Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nightingale work with this. 33. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(36) theoretical framework? How can we locate Wertenbaker’s identity as a translator, a playwright, or both? In my primary answer to these questions, I would suggest the playwright’s double identity as a translator and a playwright at the same time. Due to the diverse source materials consisting of her plays, Maya E. Roth, the editor of International Dramaturgy: Translation and Transformation in the Theatre of Timberlake Wertenbaker, also analyses that “Wertenbaker mines the cross-cultural ethics of translation in her dramaturgy” (“Introduction” 13). In this. 政治大. way, it seems that the playwright’s identity as a translator has been widely. 立. accepted by academia.. ‧ 國. 學. Furthermore, if we pay attention to The Love of the Nightingale, it is natural. ‧. to recognize the playwright’s creative translation of diverse materials. For. sit. y. Nat. example, the arrangement of the stories of Hippolytus and Philomele is just the. n. al. er. io. obvious juxtaposition between two heterogeneous cultural and historical. i n U. v. contexts. Moreover, Procne’s life in Athens and that in Thrace, cultural. Ch. engchi. encounters between Procne and the female chorus, the adaptation of the Bacchae festival for examples, all can be seen to be Wertenbaker’s creative translations of diverse materials, which broadens the plurality of the materials (languages). In other words, if historical materials are just like “a text to be translated” (GipsonKing 223), then Wertenbaker reveals and uncovers the manipulative inscription behind the bonding of the sign system. All of these multiple translations are. 34. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(37) essentially detached from the univocality of meaning reference and enable the reciprocal dialogues to circulate in the whole play. By creating gaps within the sign system, Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nightingale loosens the fruit-and-the-skin relationship of the sign system and opens up an opportune space for audiences to have reflexive thinking toward these cultural and historical materials. In this way, the arrangement of the original materials of the play can be regarded as the royal robe with ample folds. 政治大. placed by the playwright. Within these folds, a layer after another, different texts. 立. interact with one another beyond the traditional sense of time and space, and. ‧ 國. 學. newer meaning and reading of these texts can be retained as a result.. ‧. Again, however, we can by no means jump to the simple conclusion that the. sit. y. Nat. playwright creates something totally new. Instead, as Benjamin points out,. n. al. er. io. translation by a translator only unleashes the fact that “a specific significance. i n U. v. inherent in the original manifests itself in its translatability” (“Task” 254).. Ch. engchi. Translator’s task is to find “the particular intention toward the target language which produces in that language the echo of the original” (“Task” 258) and fulfill the potential of the languages by making the texts translatable. As for the newer meanings after translation, as mentioned, they are all potentials which have already existed even before translation.. 2.2 Gilles Deleuze’s Baroque Fold. 35. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(38) The space created by Wertenbaker, in my opinion, is what Delueze and Guattari call in their A Thousand Plateaus, the force of becoming or the movement of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. The force of becoming between the wasp and the orchid allows two different things to become indiscernible simultaneously at a certain moment (A Thousand Plateaus 9). By adopting the idea of becoming, Deleuze is no longer concerned about the essence but the universal variation among two or more different states.. 政治大. As a result, Deleuze further develops this idea as “mannerism” which is. 立. fluid and circumscribes “the essentiality” of classicism (The Fold 56). Yet, the. ‧ 國. 學. rise of mannerism does not indicate the replacement of classicism. Quite on the. ‧. contrary, mannerism’s appearance aims to defy the crisis of classicism due to its. sit. y. Nat. inevitable rigidity. Therefore, this may not come as a surprise that the playwright. n. al. er. io. chooses to dramatise the ancient texts by reassembling the forms so as to make. i n U. v. them flexible enough to engender new meanings to come. This way, the. Ch. engchi. proximity of the different texts beyond time and space opens up the traverse of further possible meanings. Hence, critics are able to decipher the themes such as the fluid identity, displacement of memories, and so on in this play, all of which continue to generate questions either through the playwright’s elaborate reassemblage of actions or speeches (I will further discuss this in detail later in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3). It is also intelligible how the spectators are influenced by those remote myths because Wertenbaker’s translation theatre embodies the. 36. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(39) idea of constantly traversing across boundaries of languages, places, and histories. The playwright builds up a bridge manifested in difference where people can find their contemporary resonance. In brief, Wertenbaker’s translation theatre correlates now and then, here and there, the original and the translation, and any dualistic concepts, all of which fit Deleuze’s idea that “the simultaneous double movement in opposite directions” (Spariosu 148). In this way, The Love of the Nightingale thus does not. 政治大. offer any absolute answers to the spectators but more questions and labyrinths. 立. generated through the combination and proximity of the extremities.. ‧ 國. 學. Translation, like Wertenbaker’s theatre, is full of transformations and. ‧. dynamic reciprocal dialogues. Namely, all the materials and relationships are. sit. y. Nat. undergoing an incessant form-changing. The significance of artistic creation is to. n. al. er. io. escape from the unidirectional perspective of history and present more. i n U. v. possibilities inherent in the texts so that the playwright can unfold something. Ch. engchi. new within the folds of thinking interwoven by different historical and cultural materials. Hence, to define The Love of the Nightingale as simply a feminist play (Farrell 173; Wilson 158; Wandor 218) is to ignore the essence and the possibility of this play. Then we might have to proceed with our interrogation. What is the essence of The Love of the Nightingale? Or, more broadly, what is the essence of the theatre? If we do not need to focus only on feminism in Wertenbaker’s. 37. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(40) Nightingale, then what? I would argue that The Love of the Nightingale is a play without essence at all. Deleuze’s The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque might help us further investigate the issue of the essence. In the beginning of his The Fold, Deleuze borrows Leibniz’s idea to highlight the law of curvature. As Deleuze quote from Leibniz, “there can never be a straight line without curves intermingled, nor any curve of a certain finite nature unmixed with some other” (The Fold 14). This idea helps Deleuze to build up his. 政治大. own philosophical concept, the fold. The fold refers to an irregular non-linear. 立. state which is ubiquitous in the world. Every line, be it linear or curved, is. ‧ 國. 學. influenced and formed by other forces. Deleuze illustrates his unique view of the. ‧. universe by connecting the idea of the fold to the trait of the Baroque:. sit. y. Nat. The Baroque refers not to an essence but to an operative function, to a. n. al. er. io. trait. It endlessly produces folds. It does not invent things: there are all. i n U. v. kinds of folds coming from the East, Greek, Roman, Romanesque,. Ch. engchi. Gothic, Classical folds…. Yet the Baroque trait twists and turns its fold, pushing them to infinity, fold over fold, one upon the other. The Baroque fold unfurls all the way to infinity. (The Fold 3) What kind of thing does not have an essence? Or, we might ask, what kind of thing is without an essence? In Deleuze’s sense, something without an essence means a continuous variation along with different times and spaces. Something is always changing and lacks a fixed state.. 38. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(41) To understand the definition of the Baroque in terms of lack of essence, mannerism provides a proper starting point. As far as we are concerned, mannerism is a cultural turning point as well as a transitional period between the Renaissance and the Baroque period. Mannerism appears in the late Renaissance, and the Baroque inherits mannerism to continue to respond to the issues of the Renaissance. During the Renaissance, the rebirth of Greek classic culture was desperately. 政治大. pursued by then people. In addition, the emphasis on the idea that the human. 立. beings as the centre of the world also brings about humanism. As a consequence,. ‧ 國. 學. it is reasonable to put an equation among the Renaissance, humanism, and. ‧. classicism. Especially classicism entails two ideal vectors which the. sit. y. Nat. contemporaries of the Renaissance endeavour to achieve. The first one is the. n. al. er. io. pursuit of the ideal “Form” which indicates universal “Idea” or “Essence” in. i n U. v. Platonic philosophy. For the second, the pursuit of the ideal Form can be realised. Ch. engchi. only by imitating and duplicating classical Greek classics. For example, ancient Greek tragedies, sculptures, and classical Greek philosophy are all considered to be the representation of the ideal Form. Therefore, the pursuit of the ideal Form suggests the mimesis of classics which points to metaphysical eternity and immortality. Under such a circumstance, mannerism arises as a counter-force to defy classicism. As classicism develops, the sheer duplication of the classics turns out. 39. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(42) to be rigid, restrained, and clichéd. Due to the lack of flexibility, the spirit of classicism gradually becomes a type of “formalism” or “essentialism” (The Fold 56). To respond to the problems of classicism, mannerism does not adhere to the blind worship for the “Form.” Instead, the form is simply seen as a way, a method, or a manner to represent the essence. In this sense, the rise of mannerism seeks to counter the crisis of classicism, which brings rigidity and clichés to the culture, through flexibly dramatising and stylising the materials.. 政治大. Instead of mere mimesis of the past classicism, mannerism engenders endless. 立. interplays among different combinations of the texts and materials.. ‧ 國. 學. However, this also leads mannerism to the problem of superficiality which. ‧. often makes mannerism criticised and thought to be over-exaggerated,. sit. y. Nat. ornamental, and unrealistic. In this sense, Deleuze states that “[m]annerism as a. n. al. er. io. composite of the Baroque is inherited from a Stoic mannerism that is now. i n U. v. extended to the cosmos” (The Fold 53). Moreover, Deleuze also writes,. Ch. engchi. “Essentialism makes a classic of Descartes, while Leibniz’s thought appears to be a profound Mannerism. Classicism needs a solid and constant attribute for substance, but Mannerism is fluid, and the spontaneity of manners replaces the essentiality of the attribute” (The Fold 56). In light of this, mannerism is apparently opposed to classicism, as I just have discussed, and I would like to further specify the Baroque as the “extended and profound version” of mannerism which aims to respond to the problems of classicism.. 40. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(43) Deleuze’s illumination of mannerism points out that mannerism reveals the “manners” of everything. That is, everything is represented in a certain manner. The key issue has not been solely about “what” but instead about “how” since Deleuze’s illumination of the shift in thinking. How to make things folded in a certain manner has become the major concern of Deleuze. Here, Deleuze uses the term “the Baroque fold” to describe the extended and profound version of mannerism. This, in my opinion, can be regarded as Deleuze’s inspiring. 政治大. proposition concerning the new focus and perspective of philosophy.. 立. However, the Baroque is not simply about the fold but also about “folds all. ‧ 國. 學. the way to infinity.” In this sense, it is vital for us to acknowledge the trait of the. ‧. Baroque as an “operative function” which “invents the infinite work or process”. sit. y. Nat. (The Fold 34). When any piece of work is read or created in a way of the Baroque. n. al. er. io. fold, it will reproduce more folds to infinity as a consequence. In the world of the. i n U. v. Baroque fold, without simplified linear thinking, everything becomes. Ch. engchi. complicated and problematic. At this moment, the problem, according to Deleuze, is “not how to finish a fold, but how to continue it, to have it go through the ceiling, how to bring it to infinity” (The Fold 34). We can understand that it is impossible to trace back to the original or the fundamental essence of a work if the essence has been covered and twisted with numberless folds through the operative function of the Baroque.. 41. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(44) Then, how does Deleuze exactly depict the concept of the Baroque fold? Based on Leibniz’s theory, Deleuze’s Baroque fold illustrates a world with infinite curves. It is first folded into two different vectors that used to be thought to be opposite in Descartes’s sense: the matter and the soul, both of which are filled with infinite folds. Leibniz transforms Descartes’s binary opposition into two labyrinths of the matter and the soul respectively. The two labyrinths are continuous and connected to each other as a two-level building. Below is the. 政治大. floor of the matter emphasising continuity, while above is the floor of the soul. 立. that highlights liberty (The Fold 3). To connect this binary opposition points to. ‧ 國. 學. Leibniz’s attempt to dissolve Descartes’s dualism. By adopting the metaphor of. ‧. these two labyrinths, Deleuze proposes his crucial idea of the “multiple” which. sit. y. Nat. can thus be understood as “what is folded in many ways” (The Fold 3). In this. n. al. er. io. sense, the so-called “multiple” can be considered to be the state that contains numberless folds curved with multiple layers.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Wertenbaker’s highly intertexual and intercultural works, for example, transforming from various ancient and modern literary sources, apparently can be read in the way of the Baroque fold. In her discussion of the playwright’s relation to history, Wertenbaker coincidentally asserts that history is not progressive anymore but more messy and full of uncertainty than it seems to be (“Dancing with History” 17-23). She also exemplifies her points with The Grace of Mary Traverse, demonstrating that the invention of Mary Traverse placed in. 42. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(45) historical contexts actualizes the playwright’s imagination of “a woman on a quest” and, more importantly, the complexity of the figure (“Dancing with History” 20). In this way, the playwright’s modern imagination dances with historical backgrounds which are external to our familiar world. The figure of Mary Traverse becomes complicated and therefore produces different levels of space for interpretations. By making us aware of the complexity and multivocality of history, Wertenbaker successfully turns on Baroque machines. 政治大. in her distinguished historical plays.10. 立. Once we realize the operative function of the fold going on in Wertenbaker’s. ‧ 國. 學. plays, it is meaningless to simplify her plays to any certain topics, for. ‧. Wertenbaker’s play is dialogic in a sense to refuse to “finalise dominant. sit. y. Nat. ideologies” (Keyssar 95). However, to further probe into the idea of the fold,. n. al. er. io. Deleuze’s discussion about Leibniz’s “monad” cannot be neglected. The. i n U. v. viewpoint of the monad can further provide us with a new perspective of. Ch. engchi. thinking of the play as a machine consisting of several parts which motivate and influence each other.. 10. Deleuze differentiates the term “mechanism” and “machine” in the first chapter of The Fold. To him, the fold is not just the movement of forces; instead, the fold is a machine “whose every part of piece is a machine,” and it is always correlated to “an external determination” or “the direct action of the surroundings.” This suggests the idea that “machine” as an open system in which every part is open to and influenced by one another. Also, machine enables to distinguish the specific function of the parts while at the same time each part can be related to each other. Based on this definition, machine seems to be a system which distinguishes things, but in the meanwhile it synthesises the contradiction. By doing so, the concept of the fold can transcend the level of experiences to “the level of souls.” Therefore, what Deleuze means by “Baroque machines” refers to the operative function of “an internalization of the outside” (The Fold 8). This becomes his fundamental basis for his concept of the monad and the fold. 43. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(46) It is well-known that Deleuze’s idea of the fold challenges the traditional binary opposition. The critical differentiation of these two different thinking systems lies in the concept of the “monad” according to Deleuze’s discussion. In Leibniz’s sense, the monad is the minimum unit of the world. Yet, at the same time, the monad is also “a unity that envelops a multiplicity, this multiplicity developing the ‘One’ in the manner of a ‘series’” (The Fold 23). In other words, according to Leibniz, the monad is, in fact, a double bind that envelops and. 政治大. develops the whole world at the same time. Intriguingly, it also implicates and. 立. explicates itself as well. In this sense, by connecting the opposite ideas of one and. ‧ 國. 學. multiplicity, the monad greatly subverts the traditional dualism.. ‧. As far as we have discussed, the Baroque fold can be concluded with two. sit. y. Nat. traits: 1) the minimum is not the opposite of the maximum; instead, the. n. al. er. io. minimum is the extension of the maximum just like a monad envelops and. i n U. v. develops the whole series of the world; 2) the fold means to surpass and. Ch. engchi. transcend the extremities of the binary opposition; to be more specific, how to fold two incompatible extremities is the issue of the Baroque fold. Finding this concept of the monad too obscure to grasp, Deleuze borrows a metaphor of a point of view of a city sketched by Plotinus to unravel the complexity of the concept. The world as an infinite series can be seen as a city of which every monad reflects its point of view. However, not a single monad can fully grasp the whole series just like a lamp could only light up part of the streets:. 44. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(47) “What can be apprehended from one point of view is therefore neither a determined street nor a relation that might be determined with other streets.” As a result, any point of view is partial and limited; however, “the variety of all possible connections between the course of a given street and that of another” (The Fold 24). In this sense, every single monad can be seen as a single subject’s position in the series from a certain perspective which reflects the world in its own distinctive way, but at the same time every monad is also connected to each. 政治大. other. This metaphor once again suggests Deleuze’s concern about how to. 立. perceive and read the series.. ‧ 國. 學. Therefore, the monad’s explication, implication, and complication “form the. ‧. triad of the fold, following the variations of the relation of the One-Multiple” (The. sit. y. Nat. Fold 24). The monad represents the minimum unit of the world and also of the. n. al. er. io. fold. Moreover, it also represents the relation of one monad and multiple. i n U. v. monads. In this way, once again, the world or the work is constructed by. Ch. engchi. numerous monads or “fold after fold” at the same time (The Fold 33). In a novel, for instance, every character stands on a certain point of view. Despite its limitation, each point of view is counter-influence or extends to one another so as to engender and motivate the unfolding force of the whole storyline. In brief, every monad can be seen as a fold, and every fold influences one another. If a monad reflects a certain possible world, then how can another monad relate to one another in spite of their differences? Deleuze tackles the paradox. 45. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.

(48) through Leibniz’s insight, compossibility, in Chapter 5 of The Fold. For instance, “Adam sinned, but his opposite, Adam the nonsinner, is neither impossible nor inherently contradictory” (The Fold 59). From this quote, we can clearly see Deleuze’s idea of the existence of the two possible worlds where Adam eats the forbidden fruit and where Adam refuses to eat it. Namely, both of these two worlds are included in Adam. Moreover, the world where Adam eats the forbidden fruit also exists in Eve, who entices Adam to sin. Both of the. 政治大. individuals in whom possible worlds inherently exist interweave the following. 立. development of the fall of human beings. However, these two possible worlds. ‧ 國. 學. cannot exist in the same world simultaneously. In this sense, Leibniz proposes. ‧. the ideas of compossibility and incompossibility to replace the idea of. sit. y. Nat. contradiction in traditional philosophy (The Fold 59). Compossibility is served as. n. al. er. io. a concept to explain the co-existence of different possible worlds, and. i n U. v. incompossibility to explain the incompatibility of different possible worlds. Ch. engchi. within the common world. Deleuze further develops his idea of singularities based on Leibniz’s compossibility and incompossibility, suggesting that the two different possible worlds whether Adam eats the forbidden fruit are two “singularity-events” which diverges from each other so as to formulate different worlds. Despite the existence of all these compossible situations, Deleuze states that the existing world among the infinite possible worlds is selected by God as “a. 46. DOI: 10.6814/NCCU201900598.