Natalie Lankester-Carthy (Principal's Career Development Scholarship)

Thesis title: The Hereditary Curse: Senecan tropes of inheritance and mortality in early modern revenge tragedy

Background

Natalie has recently completed her PhD at the University of Edinburgh. She graduated with a MSc by Research in Critical Theory at the University of Edinburgh in 2013 and a BA (hons) in English Language and Literature at the University of Leeds in 2010 .

Natalie has completed several PhD internships provided by the University and worked on various projects within the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Science, the LLC Graduate School, Learning, Teaching, and Web Services, and  the James Tait Black Drama prize.

Research summary

Natalie’s thesis examines the concept of the hereditary curse and the thematic recurrence of inheritance and mortality in early modern revenge drama, from the mid-sixteenth into the early seventeenth century. The project examines patterns in the adaptation of classical ideas for early-modern sensibilities and questions whether these tropes can be said to belong to the category of the Tragic or exclusively to specific historical, political or social context.

Research interests include tragedy and political drama, narrative time theory, psychoanalytic literary theory, feminist theory, post-structuralist theory and genre analysis.

“Let babes be murdered ill, but worse begot” : maternity and mortality in Jasper Heywood’s Thyestes. Myth and Alterity in Early Modern Literature, St Mary's College, University of Durham, June 2015.