Interlude

Summary

This interlude argues that Percy Shelley’s closet drama The Cenci reunites honor with affect. Refiguring Godwin’s “true honor,” Shelley suggests that the artistic depictions of his degraded heroine Beatrice Cenci prompt a different form of universal dignity – and intersubjective connection – without succumbing to a dichotomy between “concrete,” perhaps chauvinist, solidarity and feminine care. Crucial here is Shelleys suggestion about drama, which, through its logic of iterative re-enactment, reveals the material persistence of archaic honor codes, as well as the insistence of new modes of dignity.