BEN JONSON’IN VOLPONE’SİNDE ERKEN DÖNEM İNGİLİZ KAPİTALİZMİNİN POSTHÜMANİST HAYVAN METAFORLARI YOLUYLA ELEŞTİRİSİ

Yıl 2024, , 228 - 247, 25.06.2024

Türkan Yılmaz

https://doi.org/10.33171/dtcfjournal.2024.64.1.10

Öz

Ben Jonson’ın Volpone (1606) adlı oyunu, insanın doğuştan gelen rasyonel kapasitesine dair çeşitli örtülü veya açık göndermelerle dolu olsa da aslında eğitilmiş insan aklının cüretkâr uç edimlerine inanan, ağırlıklı olarak Avrupa merkezci ve çoğunlukla insan merkezci Rönesans hümanist reformu ülkülerinin alt üst edilmesini konu alan bir kara mizahtır. İnsan rasyonelliğinin bir sonucu olarak Rönesans, aynı zamanda erken dönem kapitalist burjuvazinin üyesi olmaya can atan bireyler arasında maddi rekabeti tırmandıran henüz yerleşik olmasa da gelmekte olan piyasa ekonomisi yüzünden meydana gelen değişikliklere maruz kalmış ekonomik ve politik dengeleriyle de göze çarpar. Dolasıyla, bu çalışmanın incelemeyi amaçladığı gibi, Jonson, açgözlü miras avcısı karakterlerine karga, akbaba gibi isimler vererek insanın miras avcılığına olan eğilimini ve sosyal parazitliği güç ve haz elde etmenin ön gerekliliği olarak dayatan erken dönem kapitalist sistemi eleştirirken aynı zamanda insan ve hayvan arasında kurulan biyolojik hiyerarşiye de saldırır. Jonson, insan ve hayvanın sözde ait olduğu farklı yerlere dair klasik değer yargılarına sahip bir yazar olsa da onun Volpone adlı oyununda karakter komedyası kullanımı, insan ve hayvan arasında türsel benzerliklere gönderme yapan politik, biyolojik ve psikolojik bir istiare halini alır. Böylelikle, Jonson insan/hayvan ayrımını göz ardı eder. Bu türcü yaklaşım yerine, Jonson, Kartezyen düalizmi gölgesinde birbirinden ayrıştırılan rasyonelliği ve fizyolojiyi konu edinen post hümanist bir okumaya oyunun kapılarını açar ve doğaya ait tüm canlıların uyum içerisinde bir arada var olabildiği bir yaklaşımı benimser. Onun karakter komedyası tercihi de bu uyum için gerekli olan iki tür arasındaki zihinsel, fiziksel ve psikolojik benzerlikleri açığa çıkarırken, insan ve hayvan arasında var olduğu varsayılan sınırları çiğneyerek iki türün ait oldukları aynı doğada birlikte varoluşuna işaret eder.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Ben Jonson, Volpone, Rönesans İngiliz tiyatrosu, posthümanizm, erken dönem kapitalizm, hayvan çalışmaları

POSTHUMANIST ANIMETAPHORS FOR CRITICISM OF THE ENGLISH PROTOCAPITALISM IN BEN JONSON’S VOLPONE

Öz

Though being filled with numerous veiled or direct allusions to innate human rational capacity, Ben Jonson’s Volpone (1606) is, indeed, a very cruel irony and subversion of the predominant Eurocentric and mostly anthropocentric ideals of Renaissance humanist reform clinging to an optimistic belief in the daring extreme deeds of well-educated human reason. As a result of supposedly cultivated human rationality, the Renaissance is also marked by its economic and political balances, embroiled in the bourgeoisie and exposed to tremendous changes due in part to the not yet settled but upcoming free market economy which steadily escalated financial rivalry among individuals longing for being one of the members of the protocapitalist haute bourgeoisies. Accordingly, as this article aims to show, while Jonson criticises social hierarchy caused by a humane inclination towards legacy hunting and the protocapitalist system forcing parasitism as a licence to own power and carnal pleasure, he also attacks the biological hierarchy established between human and nonhuman beings. Though Jonson was a playwright who has a classicist set of values regarding the place of human and nonhuman entities, his use of humours in Volpone becomes a fully functioning political, biological and psychological metaphor for certain generic similarities between the two species. By doing so, Jonson displaces the human/animal distinction, and instead; celebrates the co-existence of all natural beings in harmony, which enables the play to be open to a posthumanist reading involving the co-existence of mental entities and physical matter, which were conventionally separated from each other under the deep shadow of Cartesian dualism.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Ben Jonson, Volpone, the Renaissance English drama, posthumanism, protocapitalism, animal studies

Kaynakça

• Abrams, M. H., & Greenblatt S. (2000). The Norton Anthology of English Literature Vol 1. 7th ed. New York: W. W. Norton.
• Adamson, M. W. (2004). Food in Medieval Times. London: Greenwood.
• Black, J., & Conolly L. et all. (2008). The Broadview Anthology of British Literature Vol. 2: The Renaissance and the Early Seventeenth Century. Ontario: Broadview.
• Botvinick, M. (2016). Introduction. In Marshall Botvinick (Ed.). Staging Ben: A Collection of Essays on the Theatricality of Jonson’s Plays. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars.
• Coleridge, S. T. (2004). Notes and Lectures: Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher. E. Howell (Ed.). Liverpool: Harvard College Library.
• Daston, L., & Mitman G. (2005). Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Demont, P. (2005). About Philosophy and Humoral Medicine. In Philip J. van Der Eijk (Ed.). Hippocrates in Context (pp. 271-286). Leiden: Brill.
• Dessen, A. C. (1971). Jonson’s Moral Comedy. Evanston: North-Western University Press.
• Dunbar, C. F. (1892). The Bank of Venice. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 6(3), 308-335. https://doi.org/10.2307/1882461
• Dutton, R. (2004). Volpone and Beast Fable: Early Modern Analogic Reading. Huntington Library Quarterly, 67(3), 347-70. https://doi.org/10.1525/hlq.2004.67.3.347
• Eason, C. (2008). Fabulous Creatures, Mythical Monsters, and Animal Power Symbols: A Handbook. London: Greenwood.
• Greek, J. S., & Greek, C. R. (2002). Introduction. In J. S. Greek & C. R. Greek (Eds.). Sacred Cows and Golden Geese: The Human Cost of Experiments on Animals (pp. 15-21). New York: Continuum.
• Heller, A. (1978). Renaissance Man. (R. E. Allen, Trans.). London: Routledge.
• Isidore of Seville. (1912). Etymologies. In E. Brehaut (Trans.), An Encyclopedist of the Dark Ages. New York: Columbia University Press. (Original work published ca. 600-625 A.D.)
• Jonson, B. (2000). Every Man in His Humour. R. S. Miola (Ed.). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Jonson, B. (1999). Volpone. B. Parker & D. Bevington (Eds.). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Johnson, M. (2016). Ovid on Cosmetics: Medicamina Faciei Femineae and Related Texts. London: Bloomsbury.
• Lippit, A. M. (2000). Electric Animal: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.
• Martin, A. (2013). Sociology of Renaissance. K. Mannheim (Ed.). London: Routledge.
• McEvoy, S. (2008). Ben Jonson, Renaissance Dramatist. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Ovid. (A.D. 8/2004). Metamorphoses. Trans. D. Raeburn. London: Penguin.
• Papy, J. (1999). The Attitude Towards Aristotelian Biological Thought in the Louvain Medical Treatises During the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century: The Case of Embryology. In C. Steel, G. Guldentops, and P. Beullens (Eds.), Aristotle’s Animals in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (pp. 317-337). Leuven: Leuven University Press.
• Parker, B., & Bevington, D. (1999). Introduction. In B. Parker, & D. Bevington (Eds.), Volpone (pp. 1-29). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Parker, R. B. (1976). Volpone and Reynard the Fox. Renaissance Drama 7, 3-42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41917121
• Raber, K. (2013). Animal Bodies, Renaissance Culture. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press.
• Robles, M. O. (2016). Literature and Animal Studies. London: Routledge. Shakespeare, William. (1611/1999). The Tempest. V. M. Vaughan & A. T Vaughan (Eds.). London: The Arden Shakespeare.
• Steel, K. (2011). How to Make a Human: Animals and Violence in the Middle Ages. Ohio: Ohio State University Press.
• Stout, M. (1988). Volpone by Ben Jonson. London: Macmillan.
• Uther, H. J. (2006). The Fox in World Literature: Reflections on a “Fictional Animal.” Asian Folklore Studies, 65(2), 133-60. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30030396
• Varty, K. (1999). Reynard, Renart, Reinaert: And Other Foxes in Medieval England. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
• Vespa, M. (2017). Why Avoid a Monkey: The Refusal of Interaction in Galen’s Epideixis. In Th. Fögen and E. Thomas (Eds.). Interactions between Animals and Humans in Graeco-Roman Antiquity (pp. 409-434). Berlin: De Gruyter.
• Virgil. (A.D. 19/2007). Aeneid. (F. Ahl, Trans.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.