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Crossing the forbidden borders: The Discourses of Tyranny and Treason in Macbeth
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금지된 경계를 넘어 : 『맥베스』에 드러난 폭군과 반역의 담론

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Type
Academic journal
Author
Kim Yoo (성균관대학교)
Journal
The Shakespeare Association Of Korea Shakespeare Review Vol.43 No.3 KCI Accredited Journals
Published
2007.9
Pages
423 - 447 (25page)

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Crossing the forbidden borders: The Discourses of Tyranny and Treason in Macbeth
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This paper reads Macbeth as a socially radical text which disrupts the didactic, morality-play structure based on the traditional discourses of tyranny and treason, thus exposing the political mechanism of the ruling ideology. As reflected in the countless treason cases during the Tudor and early Stuart monarchies, the historical events and the literary representations of tyranny and treason constituted a characteristically discursive field where the potential subversiveness of Macbeth operates. Located within the extensive inter-textual field established between the text and its context, and specifically in an illuminating relation to the conservative discourses which repressed the traces of radical antithesis to the ruling ideology, Macbeth opens up the possibility to question the stable relationships between the ruler and the ruled.
The subversiveness of Macbeth is initiated and amplified by the unsettling overlaps in structure, characters and images, which constantly blur and erase the politically prohibited boundaries and the socially tabooed borders, mainly between Macbeth, traitor and usurper, and legitimate kings. The inter-penetrations and contaminations between the differentiated but overlapping notions are reinforced through excessive violence, which cannot be safely contained in or recuperated by the dichotomy between good ruler and bad tyrant. The limitations of the ruling ideology's attempt at symbolic containment could be clarified through explaining Macbeth's desire with reference to the particular social structure. Even though it is not deniable that he stands as a clear case of unbearable moral degradation, Macbeth is also a product of the specific society which sanctions and forbids the certain types of violence.
In turning our attention to the nature of the political structure in which Macbeth's treacherous desire is fermented and cultivated, we are encouraged to see him as an embodiment of the society's structural contradictions. An unsettling symbolic challenge to the sacred status of a king, Macbeth's severed head registers the audience's contradictory responses to the contemporary treason cases The sense of excess in language and violence, which has been repressed not by the text itself but by the cumulative conservative criticisms, functions as a statement of the historical trajectory of the society, producing a subversive reading against the usual grain to succumb to the moral texture of the text. Thus, the audience's eyes are allowed to be firmly set on the particular historicity of the ruling ideology, and the social conditions which never cease to promote the subversive desire and temptation.

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UCI(KEPA) : I410-ECN-0101-2010-840-003106991