<b>Appetites and excretions in <i>Blurt, Major Constable, or The Spaniard’s Night Walk</i> by Thomas Dekker

Abstract

The present essay offers an analysis of Blurt, Major Constable, or The Spaniard’s Night Walk (1601–1602) by Thomas Dekker, focusing on the construction of the food-drink-sex-excrement nexus in the text. In the wake of Cultural Studies and reflecting the scientific procedures applied to the current studies of English Culture, the methodology adopted in this essay resulted from a cross-fertilization of theoretical approaches which characterizes Gender Studies, fertile in the revision of critical positions and in the development of radically destabilizing readings of acquired knowledges. As a cultural object, Blurt enacts coeval concerns by mirroring contradictions inherent in the patriarchal system, understood not as a cohesive structure, but itself based on ideological contradictions and divergent impulses. Such contradictions and impulses are representative of cultural changes and historical transformations that we associate with the evolution of society of the modern era. Thus, one of the main purposes of this essay is to observe how the relationship between the sexes is dramatized, which, although the source of conflict, ends in an orderly fashion in order to discipline the characters’ rebellious body. This essay concludes that, despite appearances, in Dekker’s Blurt the patriarchal authority was never actually questioned, as the text actively participates in a process of reinscription of cultural norms.