Karol Cooper | SUNY Oswego (original) (raw)

Papers by Karol Cooper

Research paper thumbnail of Dice, Jesting, and the ‘Pleasing Delusion’ of Warlike Love in Aphra Behn’s The Luckey Chance

Games and War in Early Modern English Literature

Research paper thumbnail of The Modernisation of the Medieval Staging of Soul in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus

Early Modern Literary Studies, 2014

For a play whose dramatic interest centers entirely on the fate of a man’s soul, Christopher Marl... more For a play whose dramatic interest centers entirely on the fate of a man’s soul, Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is curiously devoid of an attempt to reify its most central aspect, which is the soul itself. Unlike the medieval drama, which used a combination of linguistic, bodily and material devices to emblematize soul, in Doctor Faustus, the flow of meaning is reversed, and soul—having already been inculcated by centuries of religious teaching as the defining feature of humanity, to the point that no one in the play needs to ask, “what is the thing men call soul?”—is now used by Marlowe as the signature figure of poetical discourse on the seeming immutability of personal identity in the age of reformed theology. In Faustus, soul stands for one’s susceptibility to or potential for identity mutation, contrary to reigning systems of reward and punishment. The play foregrounds the way metaphorical language is used by a subject to articulate a dialectical relation between soul as ...

Research paper thumbnail of Too High for Souls like Mine to Hide": Feminine Retreat and Exposure in Aphra Behn's the Feign'd Curtizans

Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research, 2008

The Feign 'd Curtizans (1679) gleans its comic energy from the industry of women who endeavor... more The Feign 'd Curtizans (1679) gleans its comic energy from the industry of women who endeavor to fulfill their desires by appearing not to pursue them. Prohibited from asserting openly the intention to couple with a man of their choosing, Behn's female characters broaden the scope of their influence on potential lovers by expanding the array of available identities through which they can appear as actors in the masculine world. With disguise, they hope to preserve the privileges of their cloistered, feminine identities (namely, wealth, prestige, and a nominal protection against unauthorized sexual advances) while still engaging with men to foster the wished-for romantic liaisons. A comic paradox results: women negotiate the terms of the sexual or marital transactions in which they would like to participate while seeming to erase themselves from the scenes of those transactions, reenacting the displacement that put tiiem in dire straits to begin with.To counter the advent of ...

Research paper thumbnail of 7. Dice, Jesting, and the ‘Pleasing Delusion’ of Warlike Love in Aphra Behn’s The Luckey Chance

Games and War in Early Modern English Literature, 2019

Research paper thumbnail of Games and War in Early Modern English Literature

Games and War in Early Modern English Literature, 2019

This pioneering collection of nine original essays carves out a new conceptual path in the field ... more This pioneering collection of nine original essays carves out a new conceptual path in the field by theorizing the ways in which the language of games and warfare inform and illuminate each other in the early modern cultural imagination. They consider how warfare and games are mapped onto each other in aesthetically and ideologically significant ways in the early modern plays, poetry or prose of William Shakespeare, Thomas Morton, John Milton, Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, and Jonathan Swift, among others. Contributors interpret the terms 'war games' or 'games of war' broadly, freeing them to uncover the more complex and abstract interplay of war and games in the early modern mind, taking readers from the cockpits and clowns of Shakespearean drama, through the intriguing manuals of cryptographers and the ingenious literary wargames of Restoration women authors, to the witty but rancorous paper wars of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Research paper thumbnail of The Modernisation of the Medieval Staging of Soul in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus

For a play whose dramatic interest centers entirely on the fate of a man’s soul, Christopher Marl... more For a play whose dramatic interest centers entirely on the fate of a man’s soul, Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is curiously devoid of an attempt to reify its most central aspect, which is the soul itself. Unlike the medieval drama, which used a combination of linguistic, bodily and material devices to emblematize soul, in Doctor Faustus, the flow of meaning is reversed, and soul—having already been inculcated by centuries of religious teaching as the defining feature of humanity, to the point that no one in the play needs to ask, “what is the thing men call soul?”—is now used by Marlowe as the signature figure of poetical discourse on the seeming immutability of personal identity in the age of reformed theology. In Faustus, soul stands for one’s susceptibility to or potential for identity mutation, contrary to reigning systems of reward and punishment. The play foregrounds the way metaphorical language is used by a subject to articulate a dialectical relation between soul as a stage for the free play of the phenomenological events of an apperceptive mind, and soul as an anxiously situated, culturally conditioned identity.For a play whose dramatic interest centers entirely on the fate of a man’s soul, Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is curiously devoid of an attempt to reify its most central aspect, which is the soul itself. Unlike the medieval drama, which used a combination of linguistic, bodily and material devices to emblematize soul, in Doctor Faustus, the flow of meaning is reversed, and soul—having already been inculcated by centuries of religious teaching as the defining feature of humanity, to the point that no one in the play needs to ask, “what is the thing men call soul?”—is now used by Marlowe as the signature figure of poetical discourse on the seeming immutability of personal identity in the age of reformed theology. In Faustus, soul stands for one’s susceptibility to or potential for identity mutation, contrary to reigning systems of reward and punishment. The play foregrounds the way metaphorical language is used by a subject to articulate a dialectical relation between soul as a stage for the free play of the phenomenological events of an apperceptive mind, and soul as an anxiously situated, culturally conditioned identity.

Research paper thumbnail of Dice, Jesting, and the ‘Pleasing Delusion’ of Warlike Love in Aphra Behn’s The Luckey Chance

Games and War in Early Modern English Literature

Research paper thumbnail of The Modernisation of the Medieval Staging of Soul in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus

Early Modern Literary Studies, 2014

For a play whose dramatic interest centers entirely on the fate of a man’s soul, Christopher Marl... more For a play whose dramatic interest centers entirely on the fate of a man’s soul, Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is curiously devoid of an attempt to reify its most central aspect, which is the soul itself. Unlike the medieval drama, which used a combination of linguistic, bodily and material devices to emblematize soul, in Doctor Faustus, the flow of meaning is reversed, and soul—having already been inculcated by centuries of religious teaching as the defining feature of humanity, to the point that no one in the play needs to ask, “what is the thing men call soul?”—is now used by Marlowe as the signature figure of poetical discourse on the seeming immutability of personal identity in the age of reformed theology. In Faustus, soul stands for one’s susceptibility to or potential for identity mutation, contrary to reigning systems of reward and punishment. The play foregrounds the way metaphorical language is used by a subject to articulate a dialectical relation between soul as ...

Research paper thumbnail of Too High for Souls like Mine to Hide": Feminine Retreat and Exposure in Aphra Behn's the Feign'd Curtizans

Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research, 2008

The Feign 'd Curtizans (1679) gleans its comic energy from the industry of women who endeavor... more The Feign 'd Curtizans (1679) gleans its comic energy from the industry of women who endeavor to fulfill their desires by appearing not to pursue them. Prohibited from asserting openly the intention to couple with a man of their choosing, Behn's female characters broaden the scope of their influence on potential lovers by expanding the array of available identities through which they can appear as actors in the masculine world. With disguise, they hope to preserve the privileges of their cloistered, feminine identities (namely, wealth, prestige, and a nominal protection against unauthorized sexual advances) while still engaging with men to foster the wished-for romantic liaisons. A comic paradox results: women negotiate the terms of the sexual or marital transactions in which they would like to participate while seeming to erase themselves from the scenes of those transactions, reenacting the displacement that put tiiem in dire straits to begin with.To counter the advent of ...

Research paper thumbnail of 7. Dice, Jesting, and the ‘Pleasing Delusion’ of Warlike Love in Aphra Behn’s The Luckey Chance

Games and War in Early Modern English Literature, 2019

Research paper thumbnail of Games and War in Early Modern English Literature

Games and War in Early Modern English Literature, 2019

This pioneering collection of nine original essays carves out a new conceptual path in the field ... more This pioneering collection of nine original essays carves out a new conceptual path in the field by theorizing the ways in which the language of games and warfare inform and illuminate each other in the early modern cultural imagination. They consider how warfare and games are mapped onto each other in aesthetically and ideologically significant ways in the early modern plays, poetry or prose of William Shakespeare, Thomas Morton, John Milton, Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, and Jonathan Swift, among others. Contributors interpret the terms 'war games' or 'games of war' broadly, freeing them to uncover the more complex and abstract interplay of war and games in the early modern mind, taking readers from the cockpits and clowns of Shakespearean drama, through the intriguing manuals of cryptographers and the ingenious literary wargames of Restoration women authors, to the witty but rancorous paper wars of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Research paper thumbnail of The Modernisation of the Medieval Staging of Soul in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus

For a play whose dramatic interest centers entirely on the fate of a man’s soul, Christopher Marl... more For a play whose dramatic interest centers entirely on the fate of a man’s soul, Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is curiously devoid of an attempt to reify its most central aspect, which is the soul itself. Unlike the medieval drama, which used a combination of linguistic, bodily and material devices to emblematize soul, in Doctor Faustus, the flow of meaning is reversed, and soul—having already been inculcated by centuries of religious teaching as the defining feature of humanity, to the point that no one in the play needs to ask, “what is the thing men call soul?”—is now used by Marlowe as the signature figure of poetical discourse on the seeming immutability of personal identity in the age of reformed theology. In Faustus, soul stands for one’s susceptibility to or potential for identity mutation, contrary to reigning systems of reward and punishment. The play foregrounds the way metaphorical language is used by a subject to articulate a dialectical relation between soul as a stage for the free play of the phenomenological events of an apperceptive mind, and soul as an anxiously situated, culturally conditioned identity.For a play whose dramatic interest centers entirely on the fate of a man’s soul, Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is curiously devoid of an attempt to reify its most central aspect, which is the soul itself. Unlike the medieval drama, which used a combination of linguistic, bodily and material devices to emblematize soul, in Doctor Faustus, the flow of meaning is reversed, and soul—having already been inculcated by centuries of religious teaching as the defining feature of humanity, to the point that no one in the play needs to ask, “what is the thing men call soul?”—is now used by Marlowe as the signature figure of poetical discourse on the seeming immutability of personal identity in the age of reformed theology. In Faustus, soul stands for one’s susceptibility to or potential for identity mutation, contrary to reigning systems of reward and punishment. The play foregrounds the way metaphorical language is used by a subject to articulate a dialectical relation between soul as a stage for the free play of the phenomenological events of an apperceptive mind, and soul as an anxiously situated, culturally conditioned identity.