Shakespeare's Foreign Worlds , livre ebook

233

pages

English

Ebooks

2011

Écrit par
John Watkins , Carole Levin

Publié par
Cornell University Press

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233

pages

English

Ebooks

2011

Lire un extrait

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Publié par

Cornell University Press

Date de parution

15 janvier 2011

EAN13

9780801458958

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

In Shakespeare's Foreign Worlds, Carole Levin and John Watkins focus on the relationship between the London-based professional theater preeminently associated with William Shakespeare and an unprecedented European experience of geographic, social, and intellectual mobility. Shakespeare's plays bear the marks of exile and exploration, rural depopulation, urban expansion, and shifting mercantile and diplomatic configurations. He fills his plays with characters testing the limits of personal identity: foreigners, usurpers, outcasts, outlaws, scolds, shrews, witches, mercenaries, and cross-dressers.Through parallel discussions of Henry VI, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Merchant of Venice, Levin and Watkins argue that Shakespeare's centrality to English national consciousness is inseparable from his creation of the foreign as a category asserting dangerous affinities between England's internal minorities and its competitors within an increasingly fraught European mercantile system. As a women's historian, Levin is particularly interested in Shakespeare's responses to marginalized sectors of English society. As a scholar of English, Italian Studies, and Medieval Studies, Watkins situates Shakespeare in the context of broadly European historical movements.Together Levin and Watkins narrate the emergence of the foreign as portable category that might be applied both to "strangers" from other countries and to native-born English men and women, such as religious dissidents, who resisted conformity to an increasingly narrow sense of English identity. Shakespeare's Foreign Worlds will appeal to historians, literary scholars, theater specialists, and anyone interested in Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Age.

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Publié par

Cornell University Press

Date de parution

15 janvier 2011

EAN13

9780801458958

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

q SHAKESPEARE’S FOREIGN WORLDS

SHAKESPEARE’S FOREIGN WORLDS

NATI ONAL AND TRANSNATI ONALI DE NT I T I E S I N T HEE L I Z A B E T HA N A GE

C a r o l e L e v i n a n d J o h n W a t k i n s

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the pub lisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2009 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Levin, Carole, 1948– Shakespeare’s foreign worlds : national and transnational identities in the Elizabethan age / Carole Levin and John Watkins. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 9780801447419 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Characters. 2. Characters and characteristics in literature. 3. Group identity in literature. 4. National characteristics, English, in literature. 5. National characteristics in literature. 6. Aliens in literature. 7. Literature and history—England—History—16th century. I. Watkins, John, 1960– II. Title. PR2989.L438 2009 822.3'3—dc22 2008044217

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetablebased, lowVOC inks and acidfree papers that are recycled, totally chlorinefree, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Cloth printing

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is for Michele Osherow, who taught me about Eve Cohan,and for the women of the Bvinovitch clan, especially theyoung matriarch and the tiniest Bvinovitch girl, who havesuccessfully sojourned in so many foreign worlds Carole

In memory of my teachers Stuart Sperry and Albert Wertheim John

q Co nt e nt s

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction

Pa rt I : G e n d e r , Pu n i s h m e nt, a n d P e a c e  M a k i n g i ne n r y 1 H V I 1. “Murder not then the fruit within my womb”: Shakespeare’s Joan, Foxe’s Guernsey Martyr, and Women Pleading Pregnancy in English History and Culture 25 2. Shakespeare’sVI1 Henry and the Tragedy of Renaissance Diplomacy 51 Pa rt I I : A l i e n s i n O u r M i d s t : J e w s , I ta l i a n s , a n d W a r y E n g l i s h m e n i nTh e o f Me r c h ant Ve n i c e 3. Converting the Daughter: Gender, Power, and Jewish Identity in the English Renaissance 85 4. Shakespeare and the Decline of the Venetian Republic 111 Pa rt I I I : D a n g e r o u s R e a d i n g i n Th e Ta m i n g o f t h e S h r e w 5. Many Different Kates: Taming Shrews and Queens 145 6. Shakespeare and the Women Writers of the Veneto 177

Afterword 207 Index 211

q A c k n o w l e d g m e nt s

We found working together on this project a wonderful experience that not only heightened our appreciation of each other as scholars but also strengthened our friendship. We would like to thank the many individuals and organizations that made our collaboration possible. We are especially grateful to our editor Peter J. Potter for his enthu siasm and encouragement. Karen Laun, senior production editor, and Martin Schneider, our copy editor, were of great help as the book went to press. Our readers, Phyllis Rackin and Rebecca Lemon, offered generous and helpfuladvice that inspired numerous points of revision. The undergraduate research program at the University of Nebraska, UCARE, provided us with an excel lent and meticulous research assistant in Erica Wright. We are deeply grateful to the UCARE director Laura Damuth and thank Wright for all her hard work. Numerous institutions and societies provided opportunities for us to discuss our work with other scholars as it developed. We would like to thank our friends at the Shakespeare Association of America, the SixteenthCentury Studies Conference, Shakespeare at Kalamazoo, the Medieval Institute at the University of Western Michigan, the Columbia Shakespeare seminar, the Missouri Valley History Conference, the Center for Early Modern His tory and the Theorizing Early Modern Studies cohort at the University of Minnesota, Cornell University, and Loyola College of Baltimore. Sections of“The Taming of the Queen,” inHigh and Mighty Queens of Early Modern En gland: Realities and Representations,Levin, Debra BarrettGraves, anded. Carole Jo Eldridge Carney (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) are reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan, and we are very grateful.

Carole Levin’s Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to Michele Osherow, Jim Shapiro, Lena Orlin, Jo Eldridge Carney, Elaine Kruse, Pamela Starr, and Anya Riehl for their advice and support of this project. In September 2006, I presented a shorter version

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