Jan Mosch, MA

'That he could nothing do but wish and beg': Moral Agency and Heteronomy in Shakespearean and Racinian Tragedy
While the problem of moral agency is literally biblical (Romans 7:15), it acquired particular relevance in the wake of the Reformation and the pluralisation of Christian faiths. The proposed dissertation investigates the contiguous motifs of agency and heteronomy in selected tragedies by Shakespeare and Racine. Despite the protagonists' recurring claims that they are victimised by providence or fate, they often fail to actualise their potential for (semi-)autonomous decisions. The project draws upon recent philosophical research to gain a theoretical model of personhood that both highlights the character's tragic deficiencies and facilitates the comparison. By way of careful interpretation of the plays and their contexts, I will go on to analyse the intersection of religious, anthropological and literary discourses as well as the demand-driven withdrawal of such material from the cultural net.
In 2015, J. Mosch was part of the organizing committee of the DramaNet conference on Poetics and Politics.

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