Memory of Earth and Ocean: Territories of Shakespeare’s Islands
Drawing on the definition of territory as “a word, a concept and a practice” (Elden, The Birth of Territory 7), as well as Dennis Cosgrove’s association of global spatiality and “bounded territoriality” (Mappings 20), this essay examines Shakespeare’s metaphoric island territories in the Mediterrane...
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| In: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ranam, |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Language: | Anglais |
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Recherches anglaises et nord-américaines
2024
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Summary: | Drawing on the definition of territory as “a word, a concept and a practice” (Elden, The Birth of Territory 7), as well as Dennis Cosgrove’s association of global spatiality and “bounded territoriality” (Mappings 20), this essay examines Shakespeare’s metaphoric island territories in the Mediterranean, the Aegean and the Atlantic as forms of spatial literary practice, incorporating an area of knowledge, activity and experience. Involving human agency, but also symbolic jurisdiction ruled by Shakespeare’s name, the metaphoric territories of Shakespeare’s islands are both inclusive and divisive, utopian and dystopian, and they can produce unique associations in the minds of those who listen to their dynamic sounds and see their distinctive images. Rather than being merely geological sites suitable for preserving the memory of earth and ocean, Shakespeare’s dramatic island territories are constructed and mythologized places, which expose a meta-theatrical condition that speaks about the changing sense of self shaped by space. Shakespeare dramatizes the intricate interplay of the island’s material and metaphorical meanings, with the possible implications in suggesting territorial nationalism, but also interiority. These theatrical islands (Crete, Cyprus, Rhodes, Colchis, Venice, the Canary Islands)—seen from the symbolic “island” of England’s territory—are metonymic substitutions that allow the performance of geography, anchored in its representation of theatrical specificity. They elicit multiple inversions of traditional notions of territoriality, demonstrating the permeability of island borders through ambivalent temporality and spatiality. |
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