Insensate Mob Mob Scene Of Julius Caesar Reflected In Literary Convention

Much has been devoted in literature, sociology, political science and psychology to the depiction and analysis of how people become mobs through social and political mobilization. However, as Shelley’s oxymoronic "insensate mob" subtly implies,"mob" as a general term has denied diversified mentalities and pursuits of the people behind a mask of madness. This dissertation, in the light of this, will neither simply summarize the mob phenomena in literature nor reaffirm populist worship of mass violence. Instead, with its focus on the notorious mob scene in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and its historical context and evolution, this dissertation attempts to reveal how Shakespeare and his predecessors and successors both reestablish and subvert the stereotype of the mob in their arts. Through their varied but related portrayals of mobs, these minds have established a dialogue across the centuries to explore this subject, thus proposing more ways for further reflections on history and our own time.Chapter one aims to analyze the tragic and comic elements of the mob scene in Julius Caesar in the context of its literary sources. By tracing its tragic origins in Plato’s Republic and The Bible, this dissertation further attempts to define its neglected carnivalesque affinities with Aristophanes’comedies and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. In a comparative view, this dissertation suggests these sources provide the dual theme that is later to be absorbed into Shakespeare’s mob scenes in which people could be both part of a mad mob or comic on-lookers who, after seeing through all the secrets of politics, are willingly or unwillingly seeking their own interests.In chapter two, this dissertation through its elaboration of the notion of tragicomedy reconsiders how Shakespeare interweaves this dual theme into his mob scenes in Julius Caesar and other plays and how the covert comic elements are implied. By applying the theory of group psychology, this dissertation first in an ironic way is intended to illustrate the formation of the tragic theme of Julius Caesar through the establishment of such binary oppositions as hero-mob, motivator-motivated and wise-stupid. Then this dissertation, in the close rereading of Julius Caesar, its relevant historical sources of the late Roman Republic and other Shakespearean plays, contests and reverses the established binary operation and further argues that the seemingly insane people were sanely and comically seeking their own interests through the tragic power struggle between different political rivals by turning themselves into their cooperators.In chapter three and chapter four, this dissertation reveals Shakespeare’s encounter with his precursors and successors in the later ideological battle in England. Chapter three starts with a summary of the later historical construction of the discourse of the mob; then it discusses Shakespeare’s encounters with Aristophanes in the writings of Fielding and Shelley in a time when the dominating conservatives were attempting to dismiss the people’s demand for political reform by appropriating the mob discourse and Aristophanes’comedies. Fielding and Shelly in their spiritual world inherited Aristophanes and Shakespeare’s deep insights into the mob. Their multidimensional absorption of Shakespeare and Aristophanes enabled them to dismiss the discourse of the mob and revive the comprehensiveness of the populace as portrayed in Shakespearean plays.Chapter four continues to explore another spiritual dialogue between Shakespeare and three more of his successors. Scott, who was called "the Scottish Shakespeare,’ represented the tragicomic existence of the mob in his works. Dickens, whose imagination was only surpassed by Shakespeare and Cervantes, found himself split in his attempt to be against the abundance in Shakespeare’s image of the populace. The crazy multitudes or the cold onlookers in his varied works reaffirmed different facets of the Shakespearean mob. Orwell who criticized Dickens’prejudice of the people and who openly denied the existence of the mob sympathetically reconstructed the image of the desperate individuals in the context of modern Caesarism. In his novels, the people who were completely physically manipulated and spiritually paralyzed in the totalitarian rule of Big Brother were the modern reincarnation of the Roman mob of Shakespeare.