New Maps for Old: a Topological Approach to "the Faerie Queene" and Shakespeare's History Plays

Details New Maps for Old: a Topological Approach to "the Faerie Queene" and Shakespeare's History Plays New Maps for Old: a Topological Approach to "the Faerie Queene" and Shakespeare's History Plays

Jan 1994

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994phdt........27g&link_type=abstract

Thesis (PH.D.)--AUBURN UNIVERSITY, 1994.Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-09, Section: A, page: 2841.

Mathematics

Logic

Spenser, Edmund, Spatial Awareness

Scientific paper

When Nicholas Copernicus published De revolutionibus in 1543, his announced discoveries both displaced humankind from its former place at the center of the universe and enlarged the boundaries of that universe beyond anything that had been imagined before. These discoveries evoked in men and women of the late-sixteenth century a new consciousness of both cosmic space and of psychological spaces within themselves, spaces for self-definition made available by the breakdown of the traditional, hierarchical world view. This re-vision of space is evident in almost every aspect of the culture of Elizabethan England, from its science and art to the accounts of New World voyagers. In the works of Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare, this spatial awareness manifests itself "topologically" --that is, in the relationship between places in their epic and dramatic works that can be identified as "inside" or "outside" and in the kinds of actions associated with each place. In Books One and Two of The Faerie Queene Spenser uses space both topographically and topologically. He maps the journeys of his knights through Fairyland by means of references to allegorical structures and features of the mythical landscape. At the same time, he contrasts inside spaces, where the knights struggle psychologically to define themselves in terms of certain moral virtues, and outside spaces, where that "self" intersects with Spenser's myth of English history. In his earliest chronicle plays of the 1580s and '90s Shakespeare also depicts English history topographically, as a series of epic confrontations enacted in outside, public spaces bearing familiar place -names. With Richard III, however, he begins to dramatize that history as related to moments of self-discovery achieved by the central character within the privacy of inside spaces and involving some conflict between the values of public and private life. Unlike Spenser, whose characters ultimately define themselves in terms of some value "outside" themselves, Shakespeare presents ambiguities of inside and outside that anticipate those of the later tragedies and prefigure tensions now associated with the modern identity.

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