The Female Body Map and Anxiety Over Disorder in The Comedy of Errors
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62978/2601xq3751Keywords:
The Comedy of Errors, Female Body Map, Anxiety over DisorderAbstract
As an important research paradigm in spatial studies of literature, literary cartography offers a powerful lens to explore the ideological and cultural connotations hidden in cartographic representations of literary texts. The body map of the maid Luce in Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors ranks among the most representative female body maps in Renaissance English literature. In Dromio’s humorous yet grotesque narration, Luce’s body is imagined as a distorted geographical metaphor for early modern Europe. With shadowed tones and fluid national borders, this body map serves as an alienated reworking of the prevalent Europa Regina iconography. By transplanting this conventional visual symbol onto a humble black female servant, Shakespeare subverts the established iconographic tradition and dismantles the gendered and hierarchical social order consolidated by the original map. Rooted in the historical backdrop of Elizabethan England, this peculiar body map articulates widespread male anxieties about reversed gender relations and the decline of masculine authority amid the reign of a female sovereign. Meanwhile, set against the late-sixteenth-century European geopolitical landscape, the map also mirrors England’s mounting worries about its peripheral status within the European imperial system, as well as its ambition to pursue global influence. Ultimately, this female body map acts as a concise yet compelling cultural symbol, encapsulating layered reflections on gender, race, class and national expansion within a single literary imagination.
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