Navigation and Nationalism in Shakespearean Plays

这个为期两年的项目证明了喀耳刻的形象在《错误的喜剧》和《伯里克利》中的航海和民族主义主题中起着重要的联系作用。2006年的研究重点是《错误的喜剧》。在这里，这位古典女巫的形象与《圣经》中以弗所作为异教徒巫术之地的形象混合在一起。三个以弗所女人阿德里安娜，卢西亚娜，和吕斯（内尔）的厨房女仆，所有目前的功能传统上连接到喀耳刻女巫。后两个女人特别威胁到安提弗勒斯和锡拉丘兹的德罗米奥的“民族”身份。2007年我主要研究伯里克利。我特别研究了喀尔西女巫和玛丽娜之间的关系，玛丽娜被海盗从塔尔苏斯绑架，并被卖到米蒂利尼的一家妓院。她对贞洁的固执坚持显然使她成为一个与性活跃的喀耳刻及其后代截然不同的女人。然而，瑟西女巫经常通过过度的性欲来削弱她们所吸引的男人的男子气概。玛丽娜在这方面与喀耳刻有关，因为她用语言净化了潜在顾客的性欲，使他们丧失了性欲。喀耳刻和她的后代在各种意义上威胁着受害者的身份。他们的民族身份和男性性都受到威胁。从这个意义上说，我所研究的两部戏剧中所表现出的喀尔西人的威胁与现代早期的英格兰有关。罗杰·阿斯卡姆的《校长》和拉斐尔·霍林斯赫德的《编年史》在描述意大利和爱尔兰对英国人的危险吸引力时，分别将这两个国家比作喀耳刻。因此，《错误的喜剧》和《伯里克利》中的喀尔西女巫将这些戏剧定位于早期现代英国身份的脆弱性的话语中。

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.