Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, May 12, 1994 - Drama - 255 pages
In this engaging book, John Gillies explores Shakespeare's geographic imagination, and discovers an intimate relationship between Renaissance geography and theatre, arising from their shared dependence on the opposing impulses of taboo-laden closure and hubristic expansiveness. Dr Gillies shows that Shakespeare's images of the exotic, the 'barbarous, outlandish or strange', are grounded in concrete historical fact: to be marginalised was not just a matter of social status, but of belonging, quite literally, to the margins of contemporary maps. Through an examination of the icons and emblems of contemporary cartography, Dr Gillies challenges the map-makers' overt intentions, and the attitudes and assumptions that remained below the level of consciousness. His study of map and metaphor raises profound questions about the nature of a map, and of the connections between the semiology of a map and that of the theatre.

From inside the book

Contents

Mapping the Other Vico Shakespeare and the geography of difference
1
Of Voyages and Exploration Geography Maps
40
Theatres of the world
70
The open worlde the exotic in Shakespeare
99
The frame of the new geography
156
Notes
189
Bibliography
230
Index
250
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases