Reconsidering Ben Jonson and the "Centered Self"

Abstract

Ben Jonson and Centered Self, which surveys Jonson's poetic imagery to argue that [t]he circle (suggesting perfection, harmony, equilibrium in cosmos, society, household, soul) is doubled by center (suggesting governor, king, house, inner selt).' The present study unpacks Greene's suggestive parentheses and questions Jonson's poetic representations of the centered self' by noting ways in which Jonson locates and genders this self, metaphorically, through imagery of circles and center, and socially, through reference to domestic space and household relations. Although Greene's model does not directly account for gender difference implied in binaries of closed circle and vulnerable home, and although subsequent critics ascribe a type of gender neutral masculinity to those characters displaying independence and self-reliance, whether male or female, women as such are in fact crucial in definition of Jonson's circle metaphors and thereby in construction of Jonsonian households in both poems and plays.' Greene argues that poems (and masques) depict home-dwelling as an important value, drawing perfect circles as their symbol, while comedies, he says, dramatize broken circles and dissolute households. I contend that dissolute and disbanded households of Jonson's comedies are in fact adumbrated in poems. Poetic and satiric households in Jonson are alike vulnerable because there women at center sit, and as they constitute center, women threaten its stability. This problem-even a paradox-is not original with

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