2007 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Navigation and Nationalism in Shakespearean Plays
| Project/Area Number |
18520195
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
ヨーロッパ語系文学
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| Research Institution | Kyoto University |
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Principal Investigator |
HIROTA Atsuhiko Kyoto University, Graduate School of Letters, Associate Professor (40292718)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2006 – 2007
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| Keywords | English Literature / Shakespeare / Nationalism |
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| Research Abstract |
This two-year project has proved that the Circe image plays an important role in linking the themes of navigation and nationalism in The Comedy of Errors and Pericles.
The focus of the research in 2006 was on The Comedy of Errors Here the image of this classical sorceress is mixed with the biblical image of Ephesus as a place of pagan sorcery. The three Ephesian women-Adriana, Luciana, and Luce (Nell) the kitchen maid-all present features traditionally attached to Circean sorceresses. The latter two women particularly threaten the "national" identity of Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse.
In 2007 I worked mainly on Pericles. I especially examined the relationship between Circean sorceresses and Marina, who is abducted by pirates from Tarsus and is sold to a brothel in Mytilene. Her stubborn insistence on chastity apparently makes her a very different type of woman from sexually active Circe and her descendants. Circean enchantresses, however, often emasculates men they attract by their excessive sexuality. Marina can be associated with Circe in this aspect because she deprives her would-be customers of their sexual drive, though by purifying them with her speeches.
Circe and her descendants threaten their victims' identity in various senses. Their national identities are under threat as well as male sexuality In this sense, the Circean threats dramatized in the two plays I examined are relevant to early modern England. Roger Ascham's The Schoolmaster and Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles compare Italy and Ireland to Circe respectively when describing these countries' dangerous attractions to Englishmen. The Circean sorceresses in The Comedy of Errors and Pericles thus locate these plays in the discourse of the fragility of the early modern English identity.
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Research Products
(8 results)
