Examining the Antonio plays by John Marston, I argue that the metaphors used to portray familial emotions reveal the ideologies that underpin both excessive and normative versions of familial relationships; these metaphors reveal the pressures placed on family emotions by economic and political ideologies. While critics have traditionally read instances of family breakdown in plays as moments that violate kinship norms, I argue that such moments of violence are caused by ideologies associated with inheritance structures which underpin descriptions and experiences of normative familial emotions. A travers l’examen des pièces de théâtre d’Antonio de John Marston, je soutiens que les métaphores employées pour représenter les émotions familiales font apparaître les idéologies qui sous-tendent tant des versions excessives que des modèles normatifs pour lees relations familiales. Ces métaphores révèlent la pression que font subir aux émotions familiales les systèmes de pensée économiques et politiques. Alors que les critiques ont traditionnellement lu les exemples d’éclatement familial dans le théâtre comme des moments violant les normes de la parenté, je soutiens que de tels moments de violence sont causés par des systèmes associés aux structures d’héritage qui sous-tendent les descriptions et les expériences des émotions familiales normatives.

1. Renaissance and Reformation

Original publication: Allen, Megan Elizabeth. "“Worthy my blood”: Inheritance, Imitation, and Gendered Familial Emotions in John Marston’s Antonio Plays." Renaissance and Reformation 37 (1): 2014. 110-135. DOI: 10.33137/rr.v37i1.21284. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Renaissance and Reformation. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Renaissance and Reformation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.