A Sociocultural Study on Representations of the Mediterranean World in the English Renaissance Drama

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The aim of this project was to examine theatrical representations of the Mediterranean world in the early modem English drama in terms of the saciocultural negotiations of the contemporary poetic imaginations and the Other. The scope of the study extended to include such remote areas as Asia Minor, the Mediterranean coast of Africa and the Spanish Iberian Peninsula. By the extension, representations of not only Jewish people but the Moors and their problematic exploitation in the English Renaissance drama have become topics under examination in relation to the Other in the Old World and the images of the New World entertained by the colonial West. Treating the related subject with Dr Janet Clare of University College Dublin, I co-lead the seminar 'Spain and Early Modem Drama' at the Seventh World Shakespeare Congress in Valencia. Along with the Congress, my paper 'Inscribing the Other. Shylock Reconsidered' was published in Shakespeare wo Manabu Hito no Tameni [Research Opportunities for Shakespeare] (Kyoto : Sekai Shiso-sha, 2000). The essay discusses the Renaissance anti-Semitism in terms of the triangular relationship of Venice, the xenophobic London and the Jew. I developed the theme in my next essay 'O Monstrous! Monstrous! : Othello and the Invisible Other', Shakespeare wo Yominaosu [Re-reading Shakespeare] (Tokyo : Kenkyusha, 2001), in which I examined the theatrical rhetoric of expressing and erasing of the marginal culture, which in its turn informed the Eurocentric history of Shakespeariana in general. My project successfully shed new light on the sociocultural bearing on theatrical representations of the Mediterranean world in the English Renaissance drama.