The Pathogenic Female Tongue: A Galenic and Paracelsian Diagnosis of Macbeth

女性口舌病原論：診斷《馬克白》

10.6258/bcla.2013.78.07

林熒嬌(Ying-Chiao Lin)

馬克白 ； 女性口舌 ； 發病原 ； 蓋倫 ； 帕拉塞爾賽斯 ； Macbeth ； female tongue ； pathogenic ； Galen ； Paracelsus

臺大文史哲學報

78期（2013 / 05 / 01）

209 - 236

英文

本文論述莎氏作品《馬克白》中潛存一種對於女性言論的焦慮，此點表現於劇中女性人物的口舌描述，它較不是一種戲劇呈現，卻是一個病態的社會文化處所，它威脅著男性主體，並使其「染病」。女性口舌在現代早期文化中，因其僭越與改變之能力，被視為是一病原地。在《馬克白》中，女性口舌可視為言論上暗寓或轉寓之污染原，如同疾病般感染主體，從體內（蓋倫腺體說）與體外（帕拉塞爾賽斯學說）侵襲主體。劇中，馬克白夫人將其狠毒直灌馬克白之耳，可謂「毒物之孕育者」。她慫恿馬克白的內在叛逆之情緒，甚至攪動自然秩序。另方面，女巫的語言，從帕式醫學觀點看，它們如同外來入侵的病原媒介，侵害個人乃至社會政治健康個體，即如「病毒」。而女巫的鍊鍋並非如馬克白預期，帶來煉金般的解藥，卻使他腐敗、墮落地步向窮途末路。

This paper argues that Shakespeare exhibits in Macbeth a certain pre-existing cultural anxiety about female rhetoric in positioning the woman's tongue in the play as less a dramatic representation than a pathological socio-cultural locale, one that ”sickens” and thus threatens male subjectivity. With its power to transgress and transform, the female tongue remains a pathogenic site in the early modern era. In Macbeth, this tongue may be seen as the source-or rather as a metaphor or metonym for the source-of rhetorical infiltration that infects the (especially male) self like a disease, attacking it from the inside (Galen) and/or from the outside (Paracelsus). On the one hand, armed with malevolence which she will pour into her unwary husband's ear, Lady Macbeth could be characterized as the ”breeder of poison.” She triggers in Macbeth the inner passion for rebellion, even for going against or inverting the natural order. On the other hand, from the Paracelsian pathological standpoint, the evil words spoken by witches are incarnated as agents of infection that invade a healthy individual's body, or healthy socio-political organism, like the very ”seeds” (in modern terms the germs) of evil. The witches' cauldron has alchemically transformed this body, not by purifying it into gold but by corrupting and corroding it, killing it, bringing it to the edge of death.

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1. Lin, Ying-chiao(2013)."Every Noise Appals Me": Macbeth's Plagued Ear.Tamkang Review,43(2),131-150.