NETWORKS OF SOCIAL DEBT IN EARLY MODERN LITERATURE AND CULTURE Christopher C. Criswell, B.A.

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Criswell, Christopher C.. Networks of Social Debt in Early Modern Literature and Culture. Master of Arts (English), August 2014, 109 pp., references, 62 titles.
This thesis argues that social debt profoundly transformed the environment in which literature was produced and experienced in the early modern period. In each chapter, I examine the various ways in which social debt affected Renaissance writers and the literature they produced. While considering the cultural changes regarding patronage, love, friendship, and debt, I will analyze the poetry and drama of Ben Jonson, Lady Mary Wroth, William Shakespeare, and Thomas Middleton. Each of these writers experiences social debt in a unique and revealing way. Ben Jonson's participation in networks of social debt via poetry allowed him to secure both a livelihood and a place in the Jacobean court through exchanges of poetry and patronage. The issue of social debt pervades both Wroth's life and her writing. Love and debt are intertwined in the actions of her father, the death of her husband, and the themes of her sonnets and pastoral tragicomedy. In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (c. 1596), Antonio and Bassanio’s friendship is tested by a burdensome interpersonal debt, which can only be alleviated by an outsider. This indicated the transition from honor-based credit system to an impersonal system of commercial exchange. Middleton’s A Trick to Catch the Old One (1608) examines how those heavily in debt dealt with both the social and legal consequences of defaulting on loans.
Copyright 2014
by
Christopher C. Criswell
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am especially grateful to my major professor, Dr. Kevin Curran, for his support and guidance with this project, and for his continued mentorship throughout my time as a graduate student at the University of North Texas. I am indebted to him for his enthusiasm and encouragement as I developed my ideas of social debt in the text examined here. I am also very grateful to my committee member Dr. Jacqueline Vanhoutte for inspiring me to study early modern literature with her undergraduate class on the works of Shakespeare. Her dedication and support throughout my time at UNT is invaluable. I would also like to thank Dr. Nicole Smith who provided crucial advice on how to succeed as a graduate student and develop strong, sustainable work ideas.
I am thankful to all my friends and colleagues at the University of North Texas, in particular Jessica Ward Coffman who guided me to resources on putting this study together. I would also like to thank my mother for encouraging me through all of my academic pursuits. Most of all, I would like to thank Lauren J. Rogener for her unwavering belief in my project and support during all its stages. As Antonio says to Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice, “My purse, my person, my extremest means, / Lie all unlock’d to your occasions” (1.1.137-139). I am truly in your debt.

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