The Anatomy of Insults in Shakespeare’s World

337 Pages·2022·2.974 MB·English

by  Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin

The Anatomy
of Insults in
Shakespeare’s
World
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The Anatomy
of Insults in
Shakespeare’s
World
Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin
THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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First published in Great Britain 2022
Copyright © Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, 2022
Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin has asserted her right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on pp. viii–x constitute an
extension of this copyright page.
Cover design by Charlotte Daniels
Cover images: Taken from The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes
by Edward Topsell (© Folger Shakespeare Library)
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To my other self, Sarah Hatchuel;
to my dear friend, Victoria Bladen;
to my wonderful family;
and to the healing power of words
vi
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
List of abbreviations xi
Introduction: ‘No abuse?’ 1
1 The spectacular rhetoric of insult 19
2 The ‘merry war’: Insult as a love game 49
3 ‘Quarrelling by the book’: Insult and duelling
codes 81
4 Insults as actionable words 111
5 Insult and the taming of the tongue 143
6 The trauma of insult 173
7 Insult beyond words 207
Epilogue: Shakespeare’s theatre of insult 241
Notes 249
Bibliography of work cited 285
Detailed outline 304
Index 307
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My first thanks go to The Arden Shakespeare, especially to
Lara Bateman and Mark Dudgeon, for their trust, generous
help, constant support and benevolent patience.
Like the Dictionary that preceded it, this book is the fruit of
more than twenty-five years of work on Shakespeare’s insults.
This work started under the supervision of Pierre Iselin when I
was a PhD student. I remain grateful to him for accompanying
me during so many joyful years of research.
The idea of this book emerged when I was a lecturer at
the University of Rouen, and I wish to warmly thank my
faithful friends Michèle Willems and Raymond Willems for
encouraging me from the beginning to the end of this project.
Finishing this book at the Université Paul-Valéry
Montpellier 3, I also wish to thank my Montpellier friends
and colleagues. My deep gratitude goes to the members of the
Institut de Recherche sur la Renaissance, l’âge Classique et
les Lumières (IRCL, UMR5186 CNRS/Université Paul-Valéry
Montpellier 3) for the help and support they have constantly
brought me. I warmly thank Jean-Pierre Schandeler, Brigitte
Belin and Vanessa Kuhner-Blaha for their invaluable human
and logistic support, without which I could not have put the
finishing touch to this book. My deep gratitude also goes to
my Montpellier friends and daily research companions, Janice
Valls-Russell, Florence March, Jean-Christophe Mayer and
Pierre Kapitaniak, with all of whom it is a pleasure to work,
for their understanding support and friendship. It is a great
privilege to work with such a team, in such a stimulating
research environment, with the invaluable support of the
Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 and the CNRS, the latter
of which I wish to warmly thank for generously granting me a
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
research leave from September 2018 to February 2019. I also
wish to thank my colleagues from the English department for
allowing me to put my teaching and administrative tasks aside
during my research leave and I am very grateful to my students
for the stimulating discussions I regularly have with them, not
exclusively but especially on the topic of Shakespearean insults.
I also wish to thank other colleagues who have encouraged
and helped me in one way or another on this long journey:
Leo Carruthers, Évelyne Larguèche, François Laroque, Ann
Lecercle, Jean-Marie Maguin, Marie-Madeleine Martinet,
Patricia Parker, Christopher R. Wilson. I am grateful to
Dominique Goy-Blanquet and the members of the Société
Française Shakespeare for giving me the opportunity to
discuss my methods and ideas on several occasions. I am very
grateful to my friend Andrew Hiscock with whom it has been
a privilege and a pleasure to work for many years now.
I wholeheartedly thank my dear friend and colleague
Victoria Bladen for her so generous help in correcting this
book.
My deepest gratitude goes to my friend – the best friend in
the world – and now Montpellier colleague, Sarah Hatchuel,
for the unfailing support she has brought me since 1998. It is
a real treat to work with her, and her friendship is invaluable.
I finally owe loads of gratitude to my family for their unfailing
patience, love and support: my dear mother, Geneviève Vienne,
my dear brothers, Jean-Paul Vienne and Frédéric Vienne, and
my dear sisters, Catherine Fortin and Fanette Devin.
I again wholeheartedly thank my children, Pierre, François,
Clément, Nicolas and Sophie, for their incredible patience, and
my husband, Serge Guerrin, for his constant love and patient
understanding.
This book being the fruit of a long-term research, I have
used some of the material that appeared in earlier publications,
mostly in French: ‘L’anatomie de l’insulte dans 1 Henry IV’,
Bulletin de la Société de Stylistique Anglaise 17 (1996): 21–35;
‘Des mauvaises langues dans Richard III’, XVII–XVIII.
Revue de la Société d’études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et