Indian and Amazon
The Oriental Feminine in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23486109 |
|---|---|
| Authors | James W Stone (0009-0004-6442-7086, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Pages | 97-114 |
| Publication date | 2009-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | English Renaissance, Orientalism, and the Idea of Asia (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan US (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1057/9780230106222_5 |
| OpenAlex | W2499953750 |
| ISBN | 9780230106222 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
Asia, under its wonted rubric of the exotic Orient, makes its way into the text of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a non sequitur, the surprise that Greece is not hegemonic or omnipresent, or the sole locus of the drama. “Why art thou here, / Come from the farthest step of India?” (2.1.68-69), Titania asks Oberon in their first dialog under moonlight. 1 Her free association of India with sexual license is a predilection that many of Shakespeare’s countrymen would have shared. The word “India” leads Titania to suspect her husband of foreign idylls, what in today’s parlance would go by the name of sex tourism. Oberon’s sexual indulgence is associated not just with India but also with another clime on the far margins of Greece, the land of the Amazons, a place even more remote and fictive for Shakespeare’s England than India was. Titania’s jealous eye imagines her fairy husband bounding from distant India back to Greece in order to attend the marriage of Hippolyta, an old amour, “the bouncing Amazon, / Your buskin’d mistress and your warrior love” (2.1.70-71). In response, Oberon levels charges of gallivanting against Theseus, who enjoyed cover under the conniving aegis of Titania (2.1.74-80). Why does Shakespeare let India and the land of the Amazons obtrude into the text of his play set in Athens and its sylvan environs? The Asian lands of India and of the Amazons, Titania and Oberon imply, are places of exotic license where one goes to cheat on one’s partner. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Ancient history · Art · Drama · Geography · Literature · History · Philippine History and Culture · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Conflicts
| Highly cited | No |
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