Volpone's Bastards

Brings Ben Jonson to the twenty-first century by reading Volpone through psychoanalysis, poststructuralism and Marxism Through studying Volpone’s three bastard children ̶ the dwarf, the androgyne and the eunuch ̶ from the theoretical argument of Freud, Lacan, Derrida and Foucault, this book discusses how Jonson’s comedies are built upon the tension between death, castration and nothingness on one hand, and the comic slippage of identities in the city on the other. This study understands Jonson,