Duchess Of Malfi - Critics

Question 1

Georg Lukács

Answer 1

(About Bosola): “his qualities and abilities are no longer part of his personality, they are things which he can “own” or “dispose of” like the various objects of the external world”

Question 2

Leah S. Marcus

Answer 2

Bosola - “reluctantly parasitic”

Question 3

Frank Whigam

Answer 3

Bosola suffers from a “crisis of inauthenticity”

Question 4

Irving Ribner

Answer 4

it is the “nobility of the human spirit which enables man to survive and triumph in spite of such a world”
“Indestructible human spirit”

Bosola - “shaped by the specific function he is designed to perform”

Question 5

David Cecil

Answer 5

“Webster does believe in the ultimate victory of virtue. The good are only defeated on the material plane. Morally they triumph. “

Question 6

T.S. Elliot

Answer 6

Webster “saw the skull beneath the skin” (in the poem whispers of immortality)

Question 7

Ian Jack

Answer 7

“Decadence”

Question 8

G.H. Lewes

Answer 8

Webster doesn’t present people how they really are - his characters are two dimensional

“False exhibition of human nature”
“Delights the pit”