Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference / Edition 1

by John Gillies

Overview

Shakespeare's images of the exotic are shown to be firmly based on the margins of contemporary maps; and examination of the icons and emblems of maps raises questions about the mapmakers' overt intentions and instinctive assumptions, and reveals connections between the semiology of a map and that of the theater.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521458535
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/12/1994
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture , #4
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	308
Product dimensions:	5.94(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.75(d)

Table of Contents

1. Mapping the other: Vico, Shakespeare and the geography of difference; 2. Of 'voyages and exploration: geography: maps'; 3. Theatres of the world; 4. 'The open worlde': the exotic in Shakespeare; 5. The frame of the new geography.

Editorial Reviews

"The book as a whole has high suggestive value and may prove to be a seedbed for other useful studies." Sewanee Review

"John Gillies's idea of 'poetic geography'—a kind of historicized phenomenology of space—is compelling; it enables him to take what might otherwise appear to be unrelated fragments—maps, the metaphors used in the titles and prefaces of Renaissance atlases, isolated turns of phrase in Shakespeare and other literary texts—and construct a resonant account of a whole, complex mental universe." Stephen Greenblatt

"Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference, John Gillies's book on the Renaissance fascination with wide-ranging and marvelous phenomena, is itself wide-ranging and marvelous, energized by the contact between the disciplines of cartography, geography, anthropology, and literary criticism." Katherine Eisaman Maus, SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

"Shakespeareans who come to Gillie's book for new interpretations of familiar plays will find their due reward, but those who stay around for the map sections will learn even more and will have more fun in the process." Shakespeare Quarterly

"The particular spin that Gillies puts on this material is to treat geography, especially where cartography is concerned, as a poetic rather than a scientific activity....Gillies's book will stand as a worthwhile contemporary supplement to works like Cawley's and to E.G.R. Taylor's pioneering studies of Tudor and Stuart geography, and as a useful corrective to current readings of Renaissance colonialism that define "context" much more narrowly that Gillies does." David Read, Modern Philosophy

From the Publisher