"Figure of Stigma" for the Harvard Renaissance Colloquium

"The Figure of Stigma in Shakespeare's Drama" was presented to the Harvard University Renaissance Colloquium. 

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to theorize a tradition in Shakespeare’s drama involving some of his greatest and most captivating characters, including (among others) Richard III, Aaron the Moor, Shylock the Jew, Edmund the Bastard, Falstaff, Thersites, and Caliban. I combine the literary historian Erich Auerbach’s account of “figural realism” with the sociologist Erving Goffman’s theory of “stigma” to establish a vocabulary for explaining how Shakespeare applied, rearranged, avoided, and dismantled what I call the figure of stigma.