CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Elliott-Newton, Dyese Imani |
|---|---|
| Title | Invading Her Space: The Violent Dismantling of Female 'Enclosures' in Shakespearean Comedy |
| Summary | Based on close readings of Shakespearean comedy, specifically The Taming of the Shrew, Measure for Measure, and The Merchant of Venice, this thesis metaphorically uses ‘enclosure’ to define specific characteristics that made women targets for violence in early modern England. Taming depicts the widespread practice of land enclosure, and offers this practice of privatizing land as a catalyst for violence against women in the enclosure of the private domestic space. Measure depicts a woman’s virginity as being one possible culprit that subjects her to violence. This idea is explained by looking at both the hymen and the convent as enclosures for women. Moreover, the play juxtaposes brothels with convents, brothel mistresses with nuns, in order to showcase how these two institutions (and the women therein), posed a threat to a male oriented society, since they were female dominated spheres, not subject to external male authority. Merchant rethinks the concept of skin as an enclosure, and assesses the ways in which dark complexioned (African) women were dehumanized and marginalized in Elizabethan-Stuart England. Conceptual metaphor theory will be used in order to assess the nature of enclosure within the context of each work. This theory rests on the idea that metaphors begin as literal, decontextualized terms, and individuals may then supply personal understanding and meanings to these terms. Finally, the metaphor is born when these decontextualized and individual definitions are fully merged and generally understood by society at large. And so the metaphor of ‘enclosure’ is effectively employed by Shakespeare to showcase his understanding of identity and gender in early modern England, a society reaffirming its own identity in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. |
| Supervisor | Reed, Zsuzsanna |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/elliott-newton_dyese.pdf |
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