Annihilating Intimacy in Coriolanus

This chapter concerns the structures of homoerotic and heteroerotic bonding that constitute the primary forms of relationship in the tragedies, the assumptions regarding femininity they entail, and the manner in which they combine, with particular deadliness, in the late tragedy Coriolanus. The chapter explores the hero both desires and fears the annihilation of his identity that intimacy with a woman either threatens. The ultimate humiliation for Coriolanus, and the one from which he flees into the arms of Aufidius, is to be female. The play in one sense concludes with Coriolanus' realization that he "cannot make true wars", that both his mother's injunctions involve him in contradictions that undermine the simple military identity he has sought and prized. Mother, still portrayed from the child's perspective as lacking subjectivity, appears as the matrix out of which his or her individuality is formed

Aesthetics · Art · Sociology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Psychology